In France, shoe brand Veja is set to launch a vegan sneaker manufactured using corn waste. Dubbed Urca, the shoe is the next generation of Veja’s V-12 leather trainers. The vegan leather is made from 50% corn waste and waxed canvas, while the laces are organic cotton. The sneakers are part of the company’s fall/winter 2020 collection and will be available August 10 online.
Urca is the latest vegan shoe introduced by Veja since the company was founded in 2005.Today, about a third of the company’s products are free of animal products.
“We thought we should try and reinvent a product. But not just any product, the most symbolic product of our generation,” says Veja cofounder Sébastien Kopp. “We wanted to deconstruct it and rebuild it differently. And it was obvious to us that this object was going to be a new brand of sneakers.”
The company has been able to spend more on sustainable production by diverting funds that other shoe brands would spend on advertising. “We could reallocate advertising resources to production, raw materials, and the people who make the sneakers,” says cofounder Ghislain Morillion. “Producing sneakers that do respect the environment, sneakers with greater economic justice, simply by removing advertising from the equation.”