Ask the Kielburgers: Where can I get ethical shoes?
These are the kinds of questions we ask ourselves every time we see our socks through the soles of our shoes and have to hit the shoe store circuit. Luckily, the number of socially conscious shoe stores is growing across Canada, such as Montreal’s Arterie Boutique and Vancouver’s new Nice Shoes.
Just as each person’s taste in shoe aesthetics is different, so is our taste in shoe ethics. Both of us try out different ethical brands – some fair-trade, some eco, some vegan – to “vote” with our dollars for as many socially conscious companies as we can. After all, the perfect ethical shoe may as yet be elusive, but we can all support those who are trying to get there by making more ethical shoes.
The best-known fair-trade shoe is Adbusters’ Blackspot skate sneaker, made in a sweat-free factory in Pakistan and sold online only. Canada’s Oliberté Shoes manufactures its wide selection of very cool fair-trade footwear in several African countries, from locally sourced leather, and they retail at 50 stores across Canada. Two online British brands have huge ranges of cruelty-free, fashionable footwear made in European factories: Vegetarian Shoes operates in England’s oldest co-operative factory, and Beyond Skin even has a bridal line.
The Ladies Of The Norse: Iceland Airwaves Review
Iceland in October, and the weather is as remorselessly harsh as the local sense of humour. Mother Nature hammers the streets of Reykjavik with freezing sheets of Atlantic rain and howling Arctic wind, but such extremes are business as usual in a city where supermarkets sell jars of ash from last year’s Eyjafjallajökull eruption, and puffin-chewing ten-year-olds proudly sport volcano T-shirts adorned with a stark warning: “Don’t Fuck With Iceland”. This is hardcore.
In the decade since I last visited, Iceland has evolved from Damon Albarn-endorsed jet-set hangout for London-jaded hipsters to international pariah/punchline following its catastrophic financial crash and last year’s ash cloud explosion. Personal debt here is now nightmarishly deep. Many Icelanders, including musicians, work two or three jobs just to keep afloat. “Everyone here is screwed,” one young woman tugging on a cigarette in a sub-zero gale cheerfully tells me, “and nobody will ever be able to pay off their debts.
I can find fair-trade coffee and organic cotton T-shirts, but I'm having trouble finding ethical shoes. Where do I look? The quest for the perfect ethical purchase can make even the hardest-core of activists go bananas (organic, fair-trade bananas,
That said, I try to consume a lot of calories — carbohydrates in the morning (cereal or pancakes or a bagel), now and then eggs and toast; and for lunch a series of snacks, energy bars of various sorts, bananas, cookies (Lorna Doones are my favorite,
16 while wearing the banana costume. Students and members of the community were outraged, to the point where students wore "Free Banana Man" yellow t-shirts to school the following week. Some students were given detention for wearing the t-shirts in
But mostly she is winningly warm and irreverent, hushing the crowd into pin-drop silence before inserting silly rhymes about bananas into 'Nothing Compares 2U'. Pure charisma. On the far northern edge of Reykjavik, the Imagine Peace Tower blasts a
