Allbirds - Comfortable Footwear Made with Natural Materials like Eucalyptus

The footwear industry alone is responsible for 700 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent pollution, in large part due to the petroleum-derived plastics in shoes. Concerned by this, Tim Brown, a native of New Zealand, began to wonder why materials such as merino wool, a wonderful and sustainable resource, were practically absent in shoe manufacturing.

Brown teamed up with Joey Zwillinger, an engineer with expertise in renewable energy, and together they founded Allbirds in 2016. With mother nature as their muse, they discovered uses for natural materials such as wool and eucalyptus for fabrics, sugar cane for soles, and trine for threads. The best part of the story is that all their sustainable materials are open-source, meaning the entire industry can (and should) use them in their products too.