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BESPOKE: THE HANDBUILT BICYCLE
Posted by core jr | 5 Feb 2010
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Comments (1)
Seal Brand, a company from Japan that specializes in transforming used tires into fashion accessories, and Hiroshima sneaker line Spingle Move have just come out with the "Sneaker 101," made almost entirely of unaltered rubber tire, with an intact tread for a sole (Oops! Not looking closely enough, the tread was molded for the shoes. Thanks, Alex!). An eco-conscious company, Seal employs artisans to hand-make each product, plants a tree for every piece sold and donates 1% of their profits to the World Wildlife Fund.
Extra great is this clearer-than-day "process diagram," describing where the material comes from and gets used.
via japan trends
Thanks, Jake!
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Comments
Two things:
These shoes do not appear to use the "intact tread". They appear to use pieces of inner tube for their uppers, which the diagram makes pretty clear, as it shows the valve found on the inner tube. Tires generally do not have a valve. That outsole is almost definitely purpose molded for these shoes.
Second, the butyl rubber used in inner tubes is probably one of the worst materials you could make shoes out of, unless you like REALLY sweaty feet, since it does breathe, because the whole point of the inner tube is to keep the air in the tire!
So essentially this is a completely useless and counterproductive product. Yes, it "recycles" a waste, but uses energy and materials to produce something that probably performs very poorly intended purpose. Unless you plan on standing perfectly still in cool, 1/2 inch deep puddles.