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The "good old way" of making leather soles grippy is nails, just to give one example. Even using synthetic materials instead of hobnails would reduce plastic co
by tfourb 3y ago
The "good old way" of making leather soles grippy is nails, just to give one example. Even using synthetic materials instead of hobnails would reduce plastic consumption quite a bit for these use cases.
I've hiked quite a bit in various types of boots and yes, It's nice to have lighter shoes, but for most people most of the time a kg more or less won't make the damndest bit of difference. Only a fraction of all hikers are attempting trails under circumstances that require top-notch performance gear.
- midoridensha 3y agoI guess you're a slow or easy hiker or something, because most people can immediately tell the difference between boots with a 1kg per-boot difference between them. I'm not even some kind of super-serious hiker, but I'm not going to choose boots that weigh double. Even walking around town that much weight would be annoying and tiring. Anyway, I do agree about using synthetic material for the soles, and leather construction doesn't necessarily have to be super-heavy.
- tfourb 3y ago99% of people are „slow and easy“ hikers so I’m in good company (though I have hiked a couple of alpine long distance trails). We buy synthetic shoes because they are cheap, look flashy and are marketed on Instagram. I’m not saying that people don’t notice the difference, I’m saying it wouldn’t make a difference to their general quality of life if the affordable (or only) option would be a shoe made out of 95%-100% biodigradable materials. I don’t really care about the 0.1% of people who go to outer space or climb Mount Everest or the 1% who do competitive trail running. Let them wear all the “high performance” great they want/need. But the default option (due to price and convenience) for the rest of us should be something that does not pollute the environment for the next 1,000 years.