Full Global Context
"It’s estimated that 20 billion pairs of shoes are produced annually, unfortunately, roughly 300 million pairs are thrown away each year, too.” Many of these companies ignore the fact that it harms our environment in tremendous ways. When manufacturing these shoes toxins, chemicals, and fossil fuels are released throughout the shoe process which leads to various of altercations that not only affect humans but the entire planet. Such as when the shoe is being transported to place to place. Which then that brings other issues that increase the carbon footprint. However, “companies and organizations are pursuing “carbon footprint” projects to estimate their own contributions to global climate change. Protocol definitions from carbon registries help organizations analyze their footprints. The scope of these protocols varies but generally suggests estimating only direct emissions and emissions from purchased energy, with less focus on supply chain emissions.” Even though their doing that they're still contributing to these global climate changes. “These chemicals are harming both the wildlife and humans that come in contact with them, which, in turn, causes many health problems. Also, shoe manufacturing produces large amounts of carbon dioxide which contributes to the already serious effects of climate change and global warming.” Regardless of different types of ways to lower it down it’s still going to be an issue because at the end of the day they have to make money.
The reason in why it is difficult for the issue to be addressed is because not everyone really speaks up about a shoe having a lot of impact in the environment. However, there is a website that does blog about the ways we can try to fix this problem (http://www.planetaid.org/blog/recycling-and-donating-shoes-what-happens-to-old-footwear). This website basically gives us tips in how we can be more aware of what we can do on the stuff we don’t want, but it mainly talks about shoes. I do believe shoe manufacturing is a global issue because not everyone knows that our shoes can be reused. Although, there’s an obvious way to this problem is to give our shoes that we don’t want to those who don’t have much. Most of the time we throw out our shoes when they’re still in good shape, but even then when they’re not we can still reuse them. Also, reading more into it I realized that not only was it an issue for workers, but also the fact that it’s harmful to our environment. These companies are obviously not going to have a label on their shoes that show us the different types of effects it has on us the way food brands have on their labels. Although, we can take a step back and see the amounts of material used for a shoe and then make a guess of how much of the material harmed us during its process. "The Shoe Waste Epidemic." 2013. Web. 25 May 2016. "Environmental Impact." The Shoe Industry. Web. 26 Mar. 2016. |