Beyond Skin is a vegan, ethical footwear label creating gorgeous, empowering footwear for discerning, style-led ladies.
Each season sees the introduction of a new and exciting eco-friendly fabrics making their unique and fabulous shoes even more desirable to eco-conscious fashionistas. The company also pledgea to give 1% of their turnover or 10% of pre-tax profits (whichever is greater) to grass-root environmental and social projects.
Eco-friendly Materials
Beyond Skin satins are always made from polyesters rather than viscose as viscose has a far greater impact on the environment as it´s processed with huge amounts of acid chemicals. Sadly because most viscose comes from developing countries much of the waste from production is dumped into rivers which often severely damages entire ecosystems. No silk is found in their satins either so no worms are boiled alive!
The shoes synthetic leathers are made from cotton-backed polyurethane (PU) and are sourced from Italy. PU looks a lot like PVC leatherette, but unlike PVC it´s much kinder to the environment. PVC contains chlorine, a toxic chemical which produces dioxin during its manufacturing process and has been linked in numerous studies to estrogen-mimicking chemicals and nasties that cause asthma. PU provides all of the glamour of PVC but without being so harmful to our environment.
Although PU (polyeurothane) is made from petrochemicals, turning animal hides into leather is a much more energy intensive, nasty and polluting practice. When you take into account how much energy it takes to bring up a cow nevermind the messy business of tanning its skin the environmental benefits of leather are pretty low. Although not an ideal alternative environmentally, PU is clearly the lesser of two evils.
All of Beyond Skin´s shoes have insoles made from approx. 70% post consumer cardboard (but this is pretty standard throughout most of the shoe industry). Heels and top pieces are made from PU plastic that are injection molded and the soles (except on our Beyond Skin Sole range which are made from flexible natural latex) are made from rubber resin of which approx. 70% has been recycled. They have been unable to source 100% recycled resin soles that give the same quality hard resin finish but are on the case.
So put a guilt free spring in your step and be the change you wish to see in the world… and the best part is that they deliver worldwide!
The liveeco team
