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

Enigmatic Shapes and Psychedelic Patterns

To say that I love Sanagi 's work is an understatement. Looking at her art feels sort of therapeutic, and I find her drawings refreshingly intricate. They're trippy, psychedelic, and resemble something that you might see under a microscope. Not much is Googleable about Sanagi, but that's fine. There aren't many artists these days that still pull off the whole mysterious vibe, so I commend her for that. By the way... they're all hand-drawn with pen and ink.

James DeRosso's ceramic monsters

I really like these whimsical ceramic creatures by James DeRosso. Yes, they have bulging eyes and toothy grins, but they're not scary at all. The Portland-based artist started making cute monsters while he was a student to jokingly create gargoyle-like guardians for the kiln. After other students kept taking his quirky little figures, he realized there was a market for them. "I'm enjoying the whole monster making niche," James says. "It's amazingly gratifying to be doing ceramics full time and especially to be a teacher introducing kids to the joy of clay." Be sure to visit his website and like his Facebook page for the latest monster news.

Kidlat de Guia's woven art

Kidlat De Guia is a photographer and filmmaker who lives and works in the Philippines. He is best known for a body of work that mixes different media as well as traditional with contemporary art-making techniques. The selected images in this post were part of his Woven into Being exhibition, which took place a fews weeks ago at the Galeria Duemila in Pasay City. This series of portraits deals with the idea of blending modern photography with the indigenous art of weaving to produce geometric tapestries with tile-like look. Working with his stock of photos taken during trips and fieldwork around the Philippines, Kidlat creates double vistas through the cutting, splicing, and weaving of the pictures. The results are rivetingly composite and texturized layers of photographic images that disclose an alternate reality.

finding cain

Search This Blog