Hush Puppies Australia GM Charlene Perera and marketing manager Jamie Kouktzelas detail the behind the scenes of the Good Shoe collection.
Being a part of a big, heritage brand it gives us the opportunity to do some good. Be a changemaker in the world.
Hush Puppies is a 63-year-old brand that wasn’t built on sustainability, and it has been a journey to weave it into everything we do and to make it a part of our ongoing culture.
And really importantly, that it aligns to our triple bottom line (profit, people, planet).
And that is what really drove our internal team at Hush Puppies to start working on building our Social Responsibility Strategy.
It reflects our personal values and passion and our work culture too.
We worked on the strategy for over a year together as a team across many sessions and really want on a journey pulling it together.
In addition to our Social Responsibility Strategy, we have a collection of shoes that we test out sustainable, recycled and eco-friendly materials in, with the intention of rolling it out to our entire range.
First launching in September of 2020, we launched a range of shoes that was made from recycled plastic bottles turned into flyknit, recycled linings and heel grips and a sole made from a mixture of recycled and natural rubber.
In reality though, The Good Shoe collection of shoes was an afterthought, kind of like the icing on the cake.
We wanted to create a sustainable foundation that the brand could build on and not just ‘green-washing’ our customers with a ‘sustainable collection’ of shoes only.
But in saying that, we’ve done a lot of good with The Good Shoe collection (pun intended).
- 612,500 plastic bottles saved from landfill globally from The Good Shoe program.
- In Australia alone, we have produced 22,5000 pairs of shoes with the recycled plastic flyknit, which equates to 112,500 plastic bottles saved from landfill.
In our current SS21 range, 29% of the range contains eco-friendly, recycled heel grip rather than conventional synthetic material.
Approximately 50% of our styles are now produced with Leather Working Group certified leathers – which means we are partnering with best in-practice tanneries who are setting the trend on sustainability and water/energy saving methods when producing the leathers.
One of our goals that we have stated in our Social Responsibility Strategy is that by 2022, at least one piece in every shoe will be recycled/eco-friendly.
And due to the findings from The Good Shoe collection, we are well on our way to achieving that target!
We also are really passionate about giving back to the country we profit off, even though we are an American brand.