I love working with sustainable brands, creating beautiful images to help promote inspired and cutting edge products. It’s important to me to see these positive grass-roots businesses prosper. I recently had the pleasure of photographing for Cocoze Shoes, a fantastic new Canadian company making eco shoes from coconut fiber and natural rubber: an alternative to the highly disposable synthetic thong that we Australian’s love to wear.
Below is a quick Q&A with Wayne Seto, Managing Partner at Cocoze Shoes.
What are the best 3 things about Cocoze Shoes?
There are so many good things about Cocoze Shoes that choosing only 3 things was difficult. So I consulted the founder of Cocoze, Pierre Thomson, for his input. In the end we both agreed upon the following, if it had to be only 3:
1) Our shoes at Cocoze naturally and gently exfoliate the soles of your feet, making your feet soft, healthy and beautiful.
2) Coconut fiber (coir) used to make our shoes is 100% natural, sustainable and biodegradable. Thus good for people and good for the planet.
3) Cocoze Shoes are all hand made in Thailand in a small eco-friendly factory. No chemicals, dyes or toxins are used in our production. Also, excess materials and trimmings are recycled resulting in a zero waste production process.
Where did you come up with the idea?
To be honest, the idea for a coconut fiber shoe happened purely by accident. The idea was born in the backwoods wilderness of Nelson, British Columbia (Canada). Pierre (company founder) was living there about 3 years ago and was using coconut fiber as a growing medium for his home garden. Coconut fiber is used in the agricultural sector for its natural qualities such as being antibacterial, antifungal and having a neutral ph level. Also, coconut fiber has a natural rooting hormone that helps build soil and helps your garden grow. During this time, Pierre got very interested in working with coconut fiber and started making other things with the fiber such as coffee cup sleeves, dish scrubbies and bath mats. One day, he happened to be standing bare feet on a sheet of coconut fiber and liked the way it felt. Cocoze Shoes was born from that very moment! Like I said, the invention of the coconut fiber shoe was a bit of luck crossing over with a bit of inspiration at the right time.
Why is being environmentally sustainable important?
Everyone on this planet is a consumer of some sort in their daily lives. While developing our shoes over the last 2-3 years, we’ve come to see that all our actions have an impact on nature and the world around us. Natural resources are often finite and/or limited. Working with coconut fiber had us look at the concept of waste in a much different way. Much of the coconut fiber in source countries of Southeast Asia consider coconut fiber to be a waste product and is generally disposed of or burned (up to 75%). Much of the world finds value in the coconut on the inside with the coconut water, milk and meat not realizing there is also great value in its rough exterior. With the world’s resources often being finite, we’ve taken the mindset with our shoes of turning “waste to worth”. We feel we have created the world’s most natural and eco-friendly sandal from a completely sustainable fiber.
Where can people find Cocoze shoes?
Currently, Cocoze Shoes are only available online at www.cocoze.com. However, we are preparing to launch a crowd funding campaign via www.kickstarter.com to manufacture a 100% natural and biodegradable shoe/sandal using materials such as Hemp and Flax for the tops. We are very excited about this and anyone can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest for updates as to the date of the live launch.
