Skip to main content

Would you buy a pair of shoes made from coffee waste?


When life gives you coffee beans, make sneakers.

Helsinki-based Vietnamese designers Son Chu and Jesse Tran have managed to create high-quality shoes made of used coffee grounds and recycled plastic. The company, called Rens Original, says the kicks are waterproof, light, durable and odor-resistant.

A pair of these unisex slip-ons weighs about 460 grams – 300 grams of that is coffee. The equivalent of six discarded plastic bottles is also used in each pair. They're made by infusing the used coffee grounds with the plastic bottle pellets. Once infused, this material is then spun into a polymer yarn where it is then knitted onto a waterproof membrane.

So if you want to help the environment while shopping for fashionable kicks, perhaps Rens is perfect for you.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Eagle Blue

Set to Julia Holter's This is a True Heart, Eagle Blue follows the story of a mother eagle looking to feed her young, but is lured into the town with the temptation of an easy meal.

Powered by body heat, this tiny flashlight doesn't need batteries

For the past ten years or so, I've made it a habit to carry a tiny penlight in my pocket whenever I travel. I wouldn't consider myself a hardcore flashlight enthusiast, but when I was younger I used to collect flashlights of different shapes, sizes and output colors. I still have them, lying somewhere in the house, ready for action in case of a zombie apocalypse. If you're looking for a small flashlight with enough light output to find objects in the dark but would rather not keep supplying it with batteries, you might be interested in Lumen. It doesn't need any external energy source except your body heat. Ross Zhuravskiy is using Kickstarter to raise funding for his creation, and with 26 days until his initiative closes, he officially surpassed his initial $5,000 goal thanks to 477 backers. So how does it work? "Lumen has relatively simple work principle - you touch TEG (Thermoelectric Generator) - small ceramic bar that can produce electric current when ...

The Unexpected Visitor

Eugene Silva was born and raised in Tanauan, Batangas, the youngest of five siblings in an upper middle-class family. He went to the Philippine Science High School and then U.P., where he intended to major in applied physics. Eugene is around 5'9, with dark sad eyes, a small birthmark on his nape, and wavy hair half covering his ears. He's six years younger than I am and he has this serious look on his face, but he's really a humorous guy who always takes time to talk to everyone he encounters. I first met Eugene when I was working at Runway Productions, an events management company filled with hot biracial women. "This is f*cking brilliant – why on earth didn't I do this before," he whispered in my ear while taking photos of Michiko, a gorgeous half-Japanese model he was attracted to. I used to supply Mich with weed and hash. She grew up in Boston and was a funny lap dancer, but that's another story. Although the idea of becoming a physicist intere...