Veja is a French fashion brand that claims to manufacture sneakers that could possibly be the world\u2019s most sustainable ones. The company sources raw materials from organic farming and ecological agriculture. Co-founders\u00a0S\u00e9bastien Kopp and Fran\u00e7ois-Ghislain Morillion say they\u00a0purchase organic cotton directly from farmer associations in Brazil and Peru at a pre-set price, all while respecting fair trade principles.<\/p>\n
For the last five years, Veja has used \u201cfish leather\u201d from tilapia in their shoes. Usually discarded by freshwater fish farms, the skin gets upcycled through a handcrafted process involving vegetable dyeing.<\/p>\n
Other examples of upcycling include B-Mesh fabric made entirely from recycled PET plastic and J-Mesh fabric from a combination of jute, recycled cotton, and recycled PET. On an average, it takes three plastic bottles to make one pair of sneakers.<\/p>\n
The company even conducts a social audit annually “to make sure our factories respect our values and meet our criteria, and to identify the areas where we could still improve and do better.”<\/p>\n