How many shoes do you own? How often do you wear them before you buy a new pair? For (that’s today, folks), consider how much material you have contributed to the landfill over the years from your shoes alone.
, a UK-based recycling art project, makes the argument that your shoes are rubbish—that “everything you buy is rubbish”—and they emphasize this by crafting shoes out of the discarded refuse they find on the beach, .
The project, created by Charles Duffy, William Gubbins, and Billy Turvey, involved collecting trash on UK beaches, melting it down, and forming sheets of material used to assemble shoes. The process is quite fascinating (you can watch the ).
The recycled footwear is anything but trashy—it actually looks pretty stylish. The shoes aren’t for sale though. Their purpose, founders say, is to represent buying less and fixing what is broken. The shoes make a thought-provoking point, but we’re not suggesting you wear things found in a Dumpster this Earth Day.