{"id":6345,"date":"2019-11-04T15:02:48","date_gmt":"2019-11-04T12:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=6345"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:39","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:39","slug":"sustainable-feet-a-fine-pine-of-vegan-shoes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/11\/04\/sustainable-feet-a-fine-pine-of-vegan-shoes\/","title":{"rendered":"Sustainable Feet: A Fine Pine of \u2018Vegan\u2019 Shoes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 2018, more than 24 billion pairs of shoes\nwere made worldwide, over 2 billion of these were sold in the U.S. alone.\nThat’s more than seven pairs per person each year filling up America’s closets,\npiling up near doorways and eventually making their way to Africa as\nsecond-hand shoes. You know those mtumba shoes right? They are Nikes but\naffordable, they are Balenciaga’s but have endured a few smelly feet before boarding\nto Africa. Now let\u2019s talk shoes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shoes are a product of everyday use that\nmost people in the world own; heels for parties, flats for a casual day,\nsportswear when you want to hit the gym and sandals because its summer.\nHowever, too much of something is poisonous as there are many environmental\nimpacts of the shoe industry that cannot be ignored much longer.  The process of shoe manufacturing and shoes\nin general poses many threats to the well-being of our planets as many toxins,\nchemicals, and fossil fuels are produced and leaked to the environment during\nthe first and last steps of the shoe life cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the environmental impact of the\nglobal apparel and footwear industries, footwear alone accounts for 700 million\nmetric tons of CO2 per year. This is equivalent to greenhouse gas emission\nproduced by nearly 149 million cars driven for one year. Companies like Adidas,\nConverse, and Nike have rolled out shoes from waste ocean plastic to reduce the\nenvironmental impact of plastic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Pine Kazi’s team|photo|Mike<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Africa does not produce Nikes or the latest\nPuma shoes but we have Pine Kazi<\/strong>. An\napparel company that offers better alternatives to synthetic footwear- shoes\nfrom pineapple leaves. Intriguing right?  A few\nweeks ago I Interacted with the four brilliant minds behind Pine Kazi; Olivia,\nAngela, Mike, and Gilbert. They started Pine Kazi as a response to a\nsustainability campaign. \u201cwe were looking for an alternative to plastics then\nwe came across pineapple fibers which also can blend well with other fibers,\u201d\nOlivia says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They settled on the\nname pine Kazi during the Hult prize challenge where they were solving the\nissue of unemployment. \u2018Kazi’ is Swahili for employment. Pine is derived from\npineapple. The two give Pine Kazi. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A dismal number care\nabout pineapple fibers. In developing parts of Africa, we have different\napproaches to dealing with this organic waste. As a matter of fact, \u201cwaste\u201d is\nan inappropriate term for organic matter, which is often put to good use- as\nmanure. After the harvest of pineapples to make a variety of products leaves,\n48% of waste behind consisting of fruit peels and leaves forming waste. These\nwastes are rich in lignin and cellulose thus form a very good raw material for\nallied fibers. Pineapple waste alone produces 1.8 million metric tons of CO2. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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a variety of shoes from pine kazi|image source| Mike<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Pine Kazi’s journey has been marked with successes a few of us can relate to from our twenties. The group which met in ENACTUS Kenya participated in the Arman competition in Jordan and emerged as the winners. They took part in London\u2019s accelerator as well. \u201cour journey has been tough, especially during the coming up with the prototype, we almost gave up,\u201d Angela says.  \u201cWhat kept you going?\u201d I ask. Angela does not shy away to explain that the school would only pay for their tickets if they had a prototype. We laugh but that was motivation enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pine Kazi has\nlearned to embrace teamwork in their daily business routines.  This has come in handy in helping balance\nbetween education and entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a typical workday\npine Kazi gets its raw material from a small scale farmer in Gatundu. Proceed\nto purify it then weave it into different products. In a single day, they\nproduce 8 -10 pairs of shoes. The demand has been high and their feature on\nForbes Africa escalated the same. Sadly, they have not been able to meet the\ndemand in the market due to the lack of funds and the right investors and the\nraw materials are not enough.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The four seek to\nreduce harm to the environment by making affordable shoes from pineapple waste.\nTheir vision is to be the dominating company internationally while using\n\u2018pineapple waste\u2019 to make a variety of eco-friendly products. Pine Kazi also\nhas a variety of products ranging from shoes, bags, mats, and carpets. The cost\nof a pair shoe Mike tells me ranges from 1500-2500 based on the cost of\nproduction. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2018, more than 24 billion pairs of shoes were made worldwide, over 2 billion of these were sold in the U.S. alone. That’s more than seven pairs per person…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":6348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environmental-responsibility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}