When I was in the Mayan Riviera in Mexico about five years ago, my friend and I stayed at a five-star resort with a beautiful beach. During our eight day stay, we decided to discover the beach miles beyond the property boundaries and into areas that were not maintained for vacationers. What we discovered was not pretty at all with the beach scattered with creepy plastic dolls, syringes, plastic bottles, a toilet, and all types of various rubbish. This is a problem all over the world and three students at the University of London want to draw attention to it.
As part of their graduate art project, the team collected all types of garbage from local beaches and discarded trash and created a colorfully stylish shoes called “Everything You Buy is Rubbish”. The students sorted their collection of plastic by color which was melted down in a convection over then flattened into a single sheet. The flattened sheet is then wrapped around a sneaker mold.
The pieces are then hand-stitched together and the shoe laces were woven from used fishing rope that the students found. The entire process from beginning to end took two weeks to complete. You can see the process in the video below.
Plastic Shoes Being Made
Discarded trash is nothing new and it continues each and every day. At the present moment, according to the World Bank, there is 1.43 billion tons of solid wasted discarded each year and those numbers will climb to 2.42 billion by 2025.
The team who created Everything You Buy is Rubbish simply want to raise awareness and help further the conversation on this matter. The students have no plans to manufacture and sell the shoes but the idea of it is pretty cool. If the shoes are durable and a few celebrities start wearing them, it’s something that could potentially catch on. Would you buy shoes made from used plastic?