Mexican company produces great shoes from seaweed and recycled plastic

While the Caribbean tourism industry is sinking into seaweed, a small company has developed a great solution: producing shoes and clothes based on sargasso and plastic bottles.

The Mexican tourism industry is facing problems of invading Caribbean beaches. Renovare Foundation found a useful solution to solve this problem.

"The idea arises from the need: how to benefit from waste? Five years ago, the dream of creating eco footwear appeared. We went through various tests and mistakes." company founder Jorge Emmanuel Castro told Sputnik Mundo.

Scientists have developed shoes based on plastic bottles.

At first, they experimented with different materials, such as bark, newsprint and polypropylene.

"Those things don't give us a product that can be sold and more, basically, these are oil-based elements," said the businessman.

By the sixth year, after countless efforts, they had developed a shoe based on plastic bottles.

'About 10 months ago, during dinner, someone started talking about the problem of sargass in Quintana Roo. I don't know anything about this type of seaweed, but my motto is: while others see the garbage we see the opportunity ' - he said.

The cause of the phenomenon of seaweed infiltration into the Caribbean Sea of ​​Mexico is due to rising sea temperature due to global warming and ocean pollution.

'Human uncontrollable consumption causes very sad things' - said Jorge Emmanuel Castro, an inventor.

He started work and a month later he got the first sargass samples to start the experiment. Four months later, they created the first shoe sole from seaweed.

The permitting process not only produces shoes but also produces clothes related to grinding small dried algae so that it can cling to the fabric. In addition, because these marine plants are contaminated with heavy metals, they need to cooperate with scientists and biologists to deal with this obstacle.

Each pair of shoe soles contains 100 grams of sargassa.

"Today, in front of us is a natural product that does not contain any factors that can harm human skin. In the long run, our idea is to develop all collections of shoes and clothes." - explains Jorge Emmanuel Castro.

Renovare Fund is not a simple clothing brand. When buying goods, everyone contributes to taking care of the planet and helping children with cancer.

In addition, thanks to a partnership with Plastic Oceans, part of the reserves will be devoted to cleaning the oceans.

"For us, this is not just a company. We lecture, we want to convey this philosophy. I think we are contributing to the development of new generations so they have a future. Brighter , " Jorge Emmanuel Castro said.

Each pair of shoe soles contains 100 grams of sargassa. With the current production capacity, the company uses 24 tons of seaweed of this type every year. In addition, each pair of shoe soles also uses 5 600 ml plastic bottles, equivalent to about 36 tons of plastic per year.

'However, all of these numbers can be increased. We have the potential for this. We are a small company with a global concept, ' said Kevin Emmanuel Castro.