At V12 Footwear, we care about the environment. When it comes to environmental requirements, we ensure they are addressed in the design and development process of our products and consider each stage of their life cycle. This includes, where possible, the use of recycled, biodegradable and eco-friendly materials, components and packaging.
In an attempt to further reduce our impact on the environment, we ensure all our raw materials have been handled and processed in an environmentally friendly way. This includes ensuring suppliers have adopted technologies such as glue-less lamination and waterless dying (used on our shoe linings) which reduces the vast amount of waste water being dumped into rivers that introduce their toxic content to the sea where it spreads around the globe.
Determined to find a safer and more sustainable solution to plastic overshoes, we developed the MukGuard; a reusable and washable overshoe that prevents slip hazards and drives down waste. Since its introduction to the market in 2016, the MukGuard has prevented approximately 90 million plastic overshoes going into landfill, and as popularity grows, this figure will increase exponentially.
The MukGuard overshoe has since been awarded an International Green Apple Award for ‘Environmental Best Practice 2017’, and we are now helping others to help the environment by including our award-winning paper published in The Green Book, the world’s only annual global reference on environmental best practice. Find out more about this fantastic international award in our blog here.
Further to winning the Green Apple Award and in partnership with Green Earth Appeal and the United Nations Billion Trees Project, we have planted a total of 100 trees. These trees have been planted where the need is greatest around the world as a source to provide food, shelter, farming opportunities and wildlife habitat, as well as absorbing pollution.
In 2020 and beyond we will continue working with factories and logistics companies that are making every effort to drive down pollution and their carbon footprint. This involves, but is not limited to the use of environmentally friendly vehicles that produce low levels of CO2 emissions as well as eco-friendly disposal of obsolete or broken equipment and accessories. Following in the footsteps of our plastic free shoeboxes, we will also be working on decreasing plastic use to move closer to becoming completely plastic free. We will continue working on new, innovative products that are cutting edge and sustainable – helping with the push towards a greener planet.
Want to find out more about our sustainability journey including our carbon neutral safety boot range Lynx? Find out all you need to know below.