Ethical Shoes

This guide to shoes focuses on a number of issues around workers' rights, along with materials used, the pros and cons of synthetic leather versus animal leather, and the price of ethical shoes.

There used to be much more shoe manufacturing in the UK than there is today. Very few companies still manufacture in-house. From the 1970s, production was increasingly outsourced to lower-wage and less regulated economies. It’s certainly not made easy for workers to resist, especially if their right to organise is limited. Organising to improve conditions is even harder for homeworkers in the shoe industry. In South Asia alone, the ILO estimate there are 50 million home-based workers serving different industries.

Which shoe brands are in this guide?

This guide to ethical shoes rates 36 brands of shoes, including popular high street favourites like Crocs, Dr Martens, Skechers and Vans to small and specialist often vegan brands like Will's Vegan Shoes and Vegetarian Shoes.

Disappointingly, nearly half the brands scored under 25 points (out of 100). But, we did find some ethical brands to recommend as best buys, as well as some secondhand retailers. 

The problems with leather

Well-made leather shoes can last a long time, but there are strong arguments for avoiding leather. Not only is leather made from the skin of animals raised and then slaughtered for sale, but the process of making it into a durable material is typically highly polluting. Leather accounts for about 5-10% of an animal’s sale value, and over 50% of leather is destined for footwear.

Animals and deforestation 

It is also estimated that 90% of deforested Amazon land is occupied by cattle pastures. JBS is one of the biggest Brazilian slaughterhouses, and also one of the world’s largest leather processors. In 2009, Greenpeace signed the Amazon Cattle Agreement with JBS and others but quit in 2017 after the company was found to have bought cattle from illegally deforested areas.

Although the agreement had led to huge improvements in monitoring, JBS was unable to monitor indirect suppliers who sold to farms that it bought from. JBS was then found to have bought almost 9,000 cattle between 2018-2022 from a criminal rancher’s family that had also been illegally deforesting land in the Amazon.

Chemicals in tanning industry

The majority of leather tanning is done with heavy metals like chromium, lead, and mercury. The Guardian reported in 2017 on tanneries in Hazaribagh in Bangladesh, where chemicals were entering the waterways. It said that many workers living in slums around the tanneries were dying before the age of 50. Eventually the government moved the industry to a new industrial zone in Savar, but Hazaribagh was not cleaned up, and pollution is now entering the river in Savar too.

Are there any vegan shoes?

Our animals category gives highest marks to companies which do not use leather or other animal products. Many companies have non-leather options, but only four on our table are fully vegan companies: Ethical Wares, Vegetarian Shoes, Viron, and Will’s Vegan Shoes.

Most leather alternatives have until recently been oil-based. However, if you compare impacts such as carbon emissions, even oil-based synthetics come out better than leather on average. Some good news in shoes is the increase in plant-based alternatives to leather. 

Our separate article on leather vs synthetics footwear has more information on these topics. 

Sustainable footwear materials

Our footwear materials rating gives most points to companies which appear to be making systematic attempts to manufacture with lower-impact materials and practices such as those highlighted in the table below. 

This table shows the 15 companies which scored more than 50 for footwear materials.

Biodegradable shoes

We only found one company with an officially biodegradable option available. Will’s Vegan Shoes sell fully Biodegradable Trainers for £86. The upper is made from Tencel, derived from wood, and the soles are made from a biodegradable bioplastic. Allbirds came close, with its Plant Pacers for £120. The uppers were made from Mirum, which they say does not meet “the rapid regulatory timeframe of ‘biodegradability’”, but that “when they do biodegrade, they contribute nutrients instead of pollutants to the environment.

The company Vivobarefoot is working on a compostable shoe by 2025. It would be made to measure, 3D printed, and composed of a 50% bio-based, durable thermoplastic that is recyclable or industrially compostable at the end of its life. Look out for VivoBiome, but only if you can afford £260 a pair!

More bio-based leather alternatives

Canvas shoe options have been available for years, but we found a number of companies were now beginning to also offer sturdier bio-based leather alternatives, ranging from materials based on apple leather (Po-Zu, Vegetarian Shoes, and Viron), to corn and cereals (Kickers and Will’s), and eucalyptus (Allbirds and Will’s). These all included some synthetic content too, but we hope the experiments will continue to generate improvements.

Recycled materials in shoes

Many companies are now using recycled materials in a variety of components, from the liner (Allbirds, Camper), rubber or EVA outsoles (Camper, Clarks, Good News, Po-Zu, Viron, Vivobarefoot, Will’s), leather (Dr Martens, Po-Zu), metallic heel loops, faux fur, insoles and laces (Dr Martens), scrap yard car seat uppers (Ethical Wares), denim uppers (Freerangers, Viron), and even coffee ground uppers (Freet). Even bigger brands such as Deckers, Schuh, and Skechers use recycled synthetics in some trainers.

Disposing of shoes 

A staggering 24 billion pairs of shoes are produced globally each year, with millions also being discarded, and most ending up in landfill.

Our separate article on upcycling and recycling shoes has more information about what you can do when your shoes have reached the end of their life. 

Buying secondhand shoes 

For the first time in a shoes guide, we have looked at (mainly online) retailers of secondhand shoes, although charity shops have been around for years. 

However, having shoes that fit well is important, and we do understand that this can make buying online a problem for footwear particularly. Returns of shoes bought online can also end up being wasted especially if not in perfect condition.

Some of the the higher scoring secondhand retailers are included as our best buys. 

Shoes for rent

Start-Rite was the one company we found that was making its shoes available for rent, through a website called thelittleloop, which describes itself as “the UK’s first shared wardrobe for kids”, though of course passing on children’s wear through friends, family or charity shops is nothing new! We also came across a project to make children’s shoes expandable, and hope to update this guide online with more news on that soon.

Repairing and caring for your shoes

With high quality shoes, it can be cheaper to resole a good shoe than buying a new pair. Timpson, the UK’s largest shoe repair chain, was an early supporter of Fair Tax Mark and is one of the largest employers of ex-offenders in the UK. Approximately 10% of its workforce is made up of people who have criminal convictions.

According to Nikwax (see Paramo in outdoor clothing guide) it is good to look after your shoes by stuffing them with newspaper if they get wet, rather than drying them on a radiator. Nikwax also have PFC-free products (see our separate article on PFCs and PFAS) to reduce cracking and improve water resistance, and rinsing off dirt with water can also reduce abrasion too. 

Workers' rights in the footwear industry

In our new Workers column, companies can accumulate points for positive steps like honest disclosure of who supplies them and convincing strategies to deal with the issues that come with complex supply chains. If we then find news reports of fundamental problems, we will deduct points. Detailed explanations are linked from our score tables. In many cases, scores are lower than those of clothing companies as conditions in the footwear industry are said to be ten years behind the garment industry, partly because the supply chains are longer and harder to monitor.

Dangerous conditions for shoe workers

Lack of regulation is a huge health issue in an industry using toxic glues and cleaning agents, as workers may not have proper protections. There have also been building safety disasters. In 2022, a footwear factory fire in Bangladesh left three people dead and 40 injured. Just two years after the well-known Rana Plaza factory collapse in 2013, a shoe factory collapsed in Wenling in China, crushing at least twelve shoe workers to death.

Over 60% of global footwear production takes place in China, with most of the work done by internal migratory workers. Another tragic consequence of this system is the estimated 66 million children that, due to costs and legal barriers, get left behind when their parents search for work.

Some shoes are manufactured in the UK

Only one company on our table manufactured all its own products in the UK. Freerangers stated "All our own styles are made to order by hand in our own workshop here in the UK and we share the same working conditions you expect for yourself."

Ethical Wares stated, “Where we can, we support the UK footwear industry as this has been hit so very hard by cheap imports from abroad, forcing much of the domestic industry to close down.” You can see in the description of each product on its website, if it was made in the UK.

Shoes manufactured in Europe

Birkenstock is a German company and 95% of its products are manufactured at the company’s own production sites in Germany. 

Other companies also deliberately chose factories in Europe instead of Asia, such as Vegetarian Shoes ("All of our shoes are made within the EU [UK, Spain, Italy, Poland, and Portugal]"), Viron (both of its supplier factories were located in Portugal), and Will’s Vegan Shoes (“Our fashion collections are made in Italy and Portugal”).

However, in general you might want to ask questions if you see a label such as 'Made in Italy', as it can hide the fact that some aspects of production might be outsourced to Eastern European countries where shoe workers can earn just 25-35% of an estimated living wage, according to campaign group Labour Behind the Label. Companies should really say more about these issues so that we can see what’s really happening.  

Supply chain transparency in footwear industry

Publishing a list of suppliers is seen as an important step towards holding brands accountable for conditions in their supply chains. Twelve of the companies we looked at did publish their first tier of suppliers. These were: Allbirds, Birkenstock, Camper, Clarks, Dr Martens, Pentland, M&S, Sainsbury’s, Deckers, Vagabond, VF Corporation, and Vivobarefoot.

However, only Clarks, Pentland, Vagabond (some tanneries), and VF Corporation were found to publish some suppliers beyond the first tier. These more distant suppliers can easily harbour more problems because there is less scrutiny. Sometimes though, a story hits the headlines, and in 2016 it was widely reported that many child refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war ended up working in second- and third-tier shoe factories in Turkey. While an EU-Turkey deal was negotiated to send refugees back from the Greek islands to Turkey, much of Turkey’s refugee-made shoe exports were welcomed to enter the EU and the UK.

Several other companies we looked at didn’t name actual suppliers, but did state which countries their products were made in. Crocs named (in order of number of factories used) China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Mexico, India, Brazil, Bosnia, and Argentina. Po-Zu discussed its “carefully sourced” supplier factories in Portugal and Sri Lanka and said they had a strict non-toxic policy. Vivobarefoot published a supply chain map of suppliers, partners, and manufacturers, but stated that it had not received some permissions to publish more detail on supplier names and addresses. Freet said that with 14 years of manufacture in the same town (in China), it had “evolved to working only in the best factories with the best workers’ rights."

Purchasing practices of shoe brands

The Ethical Trade Initiative (ETI) guide to buying responsibly states: "Conventional purchasing practices, including aggressive price negotiation, inaccurate forecasting, late orders, short lead times and last-minute changes put suppliers under intense pressure and lead directly to poor working conditions
and low pay for workers."

We only found one company directly using the language of purchasing practices. This was Dr Martens, which said that, in 2023, it had worked on a Purchasing Practices Charter and discussed forecasting and pricing as elements of this.

Camper stated “85% of our production is made in factories that are part of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC)”, a body which includes work on purchasing practices. Pentland said it was a member of ACT, the Ethical Trading Initiative Act on Living Wages. According to its website "ACT aims to achieve living wages for workers through collective bargaining at industry level, freedom of association and responsible purchasing practises."

However, any advance towards living wages appears glacially slow.  

Tax conduct and director's pay

Tax avoidance keeps profits for shareholders and directors rather than paying back into society for services we all depend on. Scoring 0/100 for Tax Conduct were Asda, Birkenstock, Clarks (Viva Goods), Crocs, Etsy (Depop), Pentland (Kickers), Skechers, Teva, UGG (Deckers), VF Corporation (Timberland, Vans), Wolverine (Hush Puppies, CAT).

Unsurprisingly, we found that all of these company groups (except Viva Goods and Asda for which details were unavailable), had directors that had been paid over £1m a year. In the case of Birkenstock, its immediate private equity owner’s pay details were not found, but LVMH which backed the investment paid over £1m.

Cost cutting in the footwear industry: from automation to Africa

As described above, many of the brands on our table are designed to funnel wealth up and away, with directors getting excessive compensation, shareholders getting their cut, and precious little being paid back in worker wages, or in taxes to fund social systems we all depend on.

Companies like these tend to ruthlessly keep labour costs down, in order to make more profit. Automation is not in itself the biggest threat to workers in shoe supply chains, but while we’re in such an exploitative and unequal system, the use of robots could end up making things even worse.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has been advising southeast Asian nations to diversify away from their dependence on garment and footwear manufacturing, because of the threat of robots that could do the work faster.

Replacement of people by machines is likely to accelerate with shoes before clothes, as the materials are more sturdy and robots can handle them more easily. Clothing production, which if you’ve ever used a sewing machine you’ll know fabric can scrunch up and get out of control, is harder to automate. Although footwear workers are heavily exploited, being made redundant by robots could mean losing what autonomy these jobs gave them, and the majority who are women could find themselves even more disempowered.

Another threat from the hunt to reduce costs, is the transfer of jobs to new countries, where workers have to start from scratch to organise for better conditions with new employers.

Ethiopia, for example, already has a large leather industry, and its government has decided to make footwear an industrial priority and offer tax breaks to foreign investors. However, it does not have a consistent minimum wage.

What’s more, the ILO has also warned that temperature increases due to climate change are going to result in lost working hours and, although Ethiopia should be cooler than other parts of Africa due to its higher altitude, it will still be affected. Rather than spreading the problems of the footwear industry further, especially at a time of increasing vulnerability, perhaps countries could be less exposed to global supply chains, and more organised around domestic requirements and regional trade.

According to the authors of Fashioning the Future, only “a free and fair system that allows the Global South to properly use its own labour, land, people and resources for the common good, rather than multinational profit-generation will end the artificial scarcity of jobs and income that keeps so many people poor and dispossessed.”

The price of an ethical pair of shoes

Prices vary a lot but our Best Buys and Recommended brands begin from around: £2 for Vinted secondhand, £5 for Oxfam secondhand, £35 for Ethical Wares, £60 for Will’s, £70 for Dr Martens, £80 for Freerangers and Vegetarian Shoes, £90 for Po-Zu, £180 for Viron.

Climate ratings and shoe brands

Two companies with more than £500m turnover each, had surprisingly little information on their websites about their climate impacts, with no reporting on emissions or reduction targets found there.

Clarks had an Environment section, with only a Restricted Substances Policy and policies related to animal materials. Its Sustainability page did mention using durable materials, but both the Origin shoes it highlighted as its most sustainable shoe, and its organic cotton children’s shoes, did not appear to be available for sale.

Birkenstock’s sustainability pages talked about using cork and waterbased adhesives, but no mention of carbon emissions or reducing climate impacts was found.

Will’s Vegan Shoes scored poorly in our Climate category. It lost marks for claiming that all its products were ‘carbon neutral’. Claims like this, that use carbon offsetting to justify suggesting that a purchase will have no impact on the climate, are also beginning to be banned in the EU.