This Climate Business: Sneaky sustainability – Orba Shoes (edited excerpts).
Listen to the full version here.
Vincent
The shoes look good and I'm surprised at the price as well. You're not charging a green premium. Those two things seem really important to you.
Gillian
They have to, because you can be as sustainable as you want. But if it's not fit for purpose and it doesn't look good and people aren't going to buy it, you're not making a difference. The only way we're going to really make a difference is if our business grows. We're in retail as well as business for good. So it's really important for them to be appealing, not just from an ethical and eco perspective, but from a fashion perspective as well. Doing good doesn't have to be ugly. We can be fashionable and cool and make all the right decisions all at the same time. That's what we believe.
Vincent
I'm assuming that you have aspirations to be a mainstream success.
Gillian
It's got to be mainstream or it's going to continue to be niche and it's going to be small and not significant enough to make a difference. Absolutely we want to be part of that mainstream game. I think as far as export and global growth, that would be something that Scott could probably tap into a little bit more.
Scott
If the global shoe market is 24 billion pairs of shoes a year, we think the casual segment of that across all casual and athletic is about 16, 17, 18 billion. The whole eco-aware segment of the shoe business is just 12%. But with the right materials, all casual shoes can be made of eco materials, if the materials are right and don't compromise durability or style. So, we think with our kinds of materials, we can be attractive to the entire global shoe market, by solving the problem.
Vincent
You’ve got some forerunners that you can enjoy the company of, right? I'm thinking of All Birds. Do you see yourself as part of a movement?
Gillian
Absolutely. I think the idea that what shoes were made out of actually mattered wasn't really a conversation. Any shoes, we buy what's available. Job done. We don't think about the rubber, the synthetic, the plastics, the longevity, the life cycle of the materials. So with All Birds opening up that door and starting the conversation, it allowed small businesses like ourselves and YY Nation, who are doing an awesome job, to come in and see how much further we can push it with different areas of the business that we actually have control over. So not just carbon or not just supply chain, but end of life and workers.
Vincent
That's wonderful. Tell us about how they're made. How do you have such bold claims?
Gillian
We take a really strong approach to sustainability, and I think that requires looking at every element of activity that's involved. We’re looking at the renewability of the resources that we're using for materials. How toxic they are to manufacture and produce for our workers. And also taking end of life responsibility as well. So really, really looking at the whole spectrum of what we have to control over. Because if we have control over it, it means that we can change our decision making. And that's the strong sustainability approach we take.
Vincent
Tell me about the materials that you've chosen.
Scott
Fabrics and yarn selections with hemp, linseed flax and ramie, three materials we laminate together. We chose those crops because they're able to grow in four to five months on waste land, thereby not interfering with food production, thereby not increasing the cost of food in the countries in which the crops are grown. And they grow without the necessity of irrigation or pesticides. We can make our uppers out of these highly renewable materials, which we think become regenerative once they can return to the ground. And the upper we think will compost in around six to eight months, just on our home tests. The great difficulty in shoes, of course, is the rubber. The first iteration was 50% latex. We've now got that down to 25% latex. So that's reducing the deforestation from latex plantations.
Vincent
Latex is a rubber extract?
Scott
Latex is natural. It's the sap from the Hevea brasiliensis tree. So, it's the original rubber. Latex wasn't very useful until 1843, when Charles Goodyear patented vulcanisation. That is mixing latex with sulphur and applying a bit of heat. Then latex became more useful.
Vincent
Tell us about the sole, then. How is it made?
Scott
It's made with normal rubber-making processes. We've just changed the raw materials that we use and the catalysts that we use to get the chemical cross-linking that's required to make the rubber strong enough to be useful. The extra materials we use are rice husk ash, waste product from food production. We've won an award in a town in Taiwan, an oyster farming town, for cleaning up their oyster shell waste. And we powderise that and use it to make the sole more durable in terms of abrasion resistance.
Vincent
This claim that you make. I'll read it again because it's quite a complex sentence. Every part of every Orba shoe made for the next 100 years will be gone before the synthetic sneakers that were discarded yesterday. So how do they decompose? Do you need some sort of specialist industrial decomposing process?
Gillian
As Scott touched on earlier, the upper by default, because it's made completely out of plant-based natural regenerative materials, we don't even have metal eyelets. You could literally cut that off the entire upper and throw it in your compost and it wouldn't be there in about six months. The sole is a bit more difficult, but by default, we're not putting anything in there that isn't a naturally occurring compound. And so that's why that claim lasts. Synthetics and plastics. We kind of estimate how long we think they're going to last, but we don't know for sure because the first piece of plastic that was ever made is still hanging around.
Orba Shoes is in the Sustainable Business Network's Next list of innovators, entrepreneurs, projects and organisations that were finalists in the 2025 Sustainable Business Awards.
SBN is partnering with This Climate Business to connect with our network and broaden its reach.