“Together our small actions can create big change”
Sustainable luxury footwear label, ESSĒN THE LABEL, are excited to announce the launch of their Waste to Wonder Initiative.
After years of cleaning up local beaches with friends, the initiative was inspired by Founder, Marre Muijs, whose mission is to keep shoes out of landfills and in people’s wardrobes.
ESSĒN’s goal is to encourage people to look at their old pieces and mend them, rather than dispose of them, or repurpose them as something else entirely. The aim is to show that the waste that surrounds us can be transformed into something beautiful and useful. The circular economy can, therefore, work and open us up to options that are recycled and reused - it’s the old that becomes new.
The Waste to Wonder Initiative asks people to spend time outdoors and take a moment to clean up their local beach, park or community. Then take a photo of their rubbish, tag @essenthelabel and share the image on Instagram - ESSEN will then send a $50 voucher as a thank you.
“With ESSĒN I want to encourage self-reflection through fashion, conscious consumption and mindful manufacturing. Encouraging consumers to buy less, buy better and wear longer. My number one mission is to keep our shoes in people’s closets, and out of landfill. This initiative is to help persuade people to shift from the "take make, dispose" model to more circular economy practices by eliminating waste and a continual use of resources” - Marre Muijs, Founder of ESSĒN
Shoe production accounts for one-fifth of the fashion industry’s environmental impact and generates 1.4% of global carbon emissions. But circularity in footwear is still extremely difficult to achieve as shoes are typically made from a variety of different materials engineered to stick together, making them near impossible to disassemble.
One of the things that makes ESSĒN different from other footwear brands, is that the brand produces in small batches, or on-demand. The brand only works with high-quality materials from low-minimum, local suppliers in family-run artisans and solar powered workshops.
The brand carefully considers that making shoes on-demand is a minimal waste approach. For this reason, ESSĒN researches heavily into which new styles and colours to invest in, and only produces what has already been sold. This new way of manufacturing eliminates overproduction and up to 90% of waste associated with traditional production processes.