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by Gerald Flores
Unless you’re a hardcore skater, you may have never heard of the sneaker company Sole Technology, Inc. It’s the parent company of action sports labels Etnies, Emerica and éS, and it’s the greenest sneaker company on earth.
Of course, there are big sneaker corporations that have environmental programs in place, but there aren’t any that have environmental sustainability built into the company DNA like Sole Tech. Everything from how the company’s headquarters are designed, to how its products are made, is carefully scrutinized.
“It’s something we have to do,” said Pierre-André Senizergues, Sole Tech’s founder and CEO. “I look at it as great work to create a future for our humanity. We have to build a future against pollution.”
In 2007, Sole Tech created it’s own internal Environmental Affairs Department. It did a full 360-degree analysis of how the business was impacting the environment, and it set goal is to be completely carbon neutral by the year 2020.
A former skater himself, Senizergues’ commitment to keeping his company green might outweigh anything the company does. If you want to get an idea of how environmentally-conscious Sole Technology is, just walk through it’s Lake Forest, Calif. research and design building:
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Its home office is powered by 616 solar panels that were installed in 2004. Senizergues declined to comment on how much it cost the company to install them, but investing in solar at the turn of the millenium is saving the company about $30,000 a year and is produces enough energy to power up to 60 homes.
“We didn’t hesitate. We put solar panels on the roof thinking it would pay for itself in five to eight years,” Senizergues said. “It was a desicion based on being less wasteful and being more cost-effective at the same time.”
Solar panels aren’t just cost-effective for Sole Tech, but they also eliminate 145 tons of CO2 emissions and 142 acres of forest a year.
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The way the company sets up the lighting inside its headquarters makes a big difference in the reducing the company’s carbon footprint. Using a lot of windows allows Sole Tech to rely on natural lighting and reduce energy.
The lightbulbs that the company does use in several of its buildings have been retrofitted to 25 watt Phillips Alto II Lamps, which carry the lowest amount of mercury per lumen.
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Walls inside the buildings of Sole Technology HQ use recycled sandstone and recycled wood. There’s also parts that have been recycled from factories.
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Although the company doesn’t own its factories overseas, it does have an “Environmental Standard” agreement that each facility has to adhere to. Some of the things included in the agreement are the restriction of materials that are harmful to the environment and letting Sole Tech monitor the energy use of the factories.
Senizergues said that in some respects, the Chinese facilities they work with are way more advanced in sustainability than in the U.S. “The costs are becoming a little more complicated when you think of manufacturing in China, but they’re moving way faster than the U.S.,” he said. “They’re re-using their energy consumption and they’re already building hydro power plants. They’re very forward-thinkers.”
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The skate sneakers the brand makes are pretty green too. Over 80 percent of its cup sole products are made with water-based cements instead of petroleum. Parts of the shoe are also put together through a fusion process that has very low impact on the environment.
The Etnies brand also plants a tree in the rainforest for each of pair of Jameson 2 Eco shoes that it sells. It first started doing the program in 2011, and it will plant its millionth tree this year.
“The first year we gathered 35,000 trees and I said ‘Wow. That’s amazing,’” the founder said, adding that it’s now targeting a second million. “I had no idea how it would turn out. We’ve been in Costa Rica for four years and now planning for Brazil. To me, it shows how small ideas can become big movements.”
