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How Patagonia Made a Boot With a Smaller Footprint

<p>&nbsp;When Patagonia developed a boot for Backpacker magazine's Zero Impact Challenge, a call for boots with the lowest environmental impacts, it found that opinions vary widely on what materials are better choices.</p>

 When Patagonia developed a boot for Backpacker magazine's Zero Impact Challenge, a call for boots with the lowest environmental impacts, it found that opinions vary widely on what materials are better choices.

"They...penalized us for using all-leather, sparking an online debate," the company says on its blog, The Cleanest Line. "Backpacker said that synthetic uppers could deliver the same performance and durability as all-leather ones, while drastically reducing environmental impact. We disagreed, believing that synthetic uppers like nylon also have an environmental dark side, and that leather’s performance and durability are unsurpassed."

Regardless of that difference in opinion, Patagonia became one of three companies from the challenge (and only five companies participated) to turn their submission into a commercial product when it launched the P26 Mid. 

Also one of the latest products whose life cycle is tracked on Patagonia's Footprint Chronicles website, the P26 Mid was determined by Backpacker to have a 25-35 percent reduced environmental impact compared to typical boots' impacts.

In developing the boot for the challenge, Patagonia said it first came up with five design criteria to consider: fit, protection, efficiency, climate control and clean design. The company writes:

"After establishing the criteria, we looked for suppliers who could meet them. We approached tanneries certified “gold” by the Leather Working Group (LWG)...

We included an insole and dual density footbed with 15 percent recycled ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) in the design, and a new outsole, the EcoStep Plus, developed with Vibram. It contained 50 percent recycled rubber – up from 30 percent recycled rubber in the Vibram EcoStep."

Patagonia also looks at how it could go further to give greater scrutiny to its boots' origins and make products that last longer.

"There are some clear steps we can take. We can audit our leather supply chain beyond the tanneries, as is done in Europe, to make sure that all steps in production have the least possible impact.

Other steps to reduce impact will require a design change. For example, the sole of a shoe usually wears out long before the leather uppers. We could make a truly long-lasting shoe if the P26 could be resoled..."

Aside from Patagonia, the only other companies, out of the 60 that Backpacker contacted for the challenge, to participate were Hi-Tec, La Sportiva, Oboz and Wolverine. La Sportiva and Hi-Tec are also selling their entires into the challenge, and the other two are expecting to have theirs available as well. And while all five companies' submissions had at least 25 percent lower environmental impacts that most boots, Oboz' Beartooth boots had a 75-85 percent smaller footprint.

Boots - CC license by jonrawlinson (Flickr)


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