Two Degrees Footwear & Apparel

Along with his Co-Founder, Luke set about producing a shoe with optimised sustainability and that simultaneously supported conservation efforts. In turn, this off-set any unavoidable environmental costs of its manufacturing and distribution. 

Together, in 2017, they founded Two Degree Footwear and Apparel producing shoes called “Twos”, operating the enterprise part-time alongside their day jobs.

Shoe production raises a variety of nuanced sustainability questions. Leather has ethical issues and environmental implications from the tanning process and livestock emissions, while vegan alternatives are often petro-chemical based, less durable and do not biodegrade in landfill. 

After visiting a vast array of suppliers, they settled on the use of bio-leather, a waste product of the cattle industry tanned using an innovative bio-process free from heavy metals. The shoe boxes are biodegradable, and made from a single sheet of recycled cardboard. The rubber outsoles are made from recycled materials such as used car tyres and old outsoles. 

Despite minimising their emissions as much as possible, it is impossible to eliminate completely, and therefore through the “Feet for Feet” initiative, each pair of shoes sold protects 1,000 square feet of endangered rainforest. This project is run in partnership with World Land Trust.

In a kickstarter campaign, the company raised over $100,000 in pre-orders. Including sales since, they have protected over 1,200,000 square feet (11.15 hectares) of endangered rainforest in Mexico, Ecuador and Argentina. The ambition is to have protected 25 million square feet by 2020.