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WRU JOURNAL
Volume 1, Issue 1
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WRU JOURNAL
Volume 1, Issue 2
Hilary Stunda is a Tucson transplant from Aspen, Colorado. A former editor-in-chief of Aspen magazine, she continues to write about arts and culture, travel, and people who do good things for the world.
Now there’s a brand you can wear everyday that financially rewards the raw material producers and doesn’t impact the environment. Now you can feel safe knowing it was manufactured in a way that gave everyone the respect they deserve and the knowledge their work had meaning. And, all the people handling and shipping the product are focused on decency, recycling, circular economy, and donating reused materials. Sound like a dream? Enter VEJA.
This dream, now reality, was the intention for François-Ghislain Morillion and co-founder Sébastien Kopp when they envisioned Veja sneakers. After witnessing workers’ conditions at a textile factory in China, they decided to create a company that combined fair trade and ecology and included a business model from the ground up that was environmentally and socially just.
Katie Holmes, Megan Markle and other celebrities wear Veja because they believe in the principles for which it stands.
This is a product whose shelf life begins with fair trade and is handled and shipped by a company whose mission is to combat social exclusion by fighting for equal rights for workers—Ateliers Sans Frontières.
To tell the story of Veja is to understand what it means to be an ecologically and socially responsible person; to create a great product is akin to acquiring wisdom. It takes time.
After years of research and development and blending various technologies, some of the materials that make a Veja shoe consist of banana oil, sugar cane, rice waste, wild rubber from Amazonia, recycled plastic bottles, and natural latex—to name a few.
The designers also took a biomimicry cue from the South American bird bone structure for their running shoe, the Veja Condor, 53% natural-based and recycled. It’s the perfect marriage between organic materials and a high performance running shoe. And it’s made in a factory in Brazil that respects workers’ rights.
If there is something that goes into the shoe that isn’t organic you can read about it on their website. For Veja, transparency guides all. When it comes to leather, they are focussed on traceability and full transparency in their use of chemicals—so they know where it comes from and what’s in it. Today, their soft and light ChromeFree leather comes from farms in southern Brazil. They use an innovative tanning process that doesn’t use any hazardous chrome, heavy metals or acids.
They even use Tilapia hides from freshwater fish farms in several of their styles. Taking what is usually discarded, they transform the waste into a luxury material using a completely handcrafted process.
Once you start on the path of hyper-integrity, there’s always something more. For instance, the organic cotton grown by farmers who use an agro-ecological method which makes the soil richer than it was before cultivating it.
Veja gets all their rubber directly from cooperatives formed by families of the seringueiros—rubber tappers.
Last year, Veja bought 300 kilos of rubber which was used to make 1,400 pairs of sneakers.
There are people devoting their lives and livings to the fight to protect the tropical forests from illegal deforestation. Veja pays these producer families an additional premium for their rubber as well as for forest conservation. This increases the economic value of the forest and thereby further protects it for future generations .
Today, more than 620 families are part of the Veja product. Sebastião watched his father work as a rubber tapper. When he turned 20, he started his studies as a Forest Engineer and graduated in 2015. Since 2017 he has been part of the Veja team and is now in charge of Veja’s Amazonian rubber supply chain.
Keeping its sources local while growing its brand globally is one great mix of ingredients in the recipe to Veja’s success.
Respect for humans and respect for the land. It is a walk in the park, or forest, when we tread it hand in hand.
