What’s Wrong With CROCS?

Crocs are made from ethylene vinyl acetate. That should be enough to make me hate them, but footwear is complicated. Traditional materials like leather cause pollution during processing. Shoes are often made in sweatshops. The list goes on, it’s hard to get a guilt free shoe if you are a conscious shopper. I have been buying second hand as a way to dilute my responsibility, but that isn’t a sustainable strategy for everybody.

I don’t own any Crocs. The first time I noticed a guy wearing them was in 2003 on the packaging line at JustUs! Coffee. They were on the guy that had a thrift store shirt that said ‘Don’t Mess With Texas’ but with ‘Don’t’ crossed out. Edgy.

I just heard that Crocs, Inc is on the ropes financially. Part of the problem is that they made a durable product for a finite market. The original models are one piece of molded plastic. From an environmental standpoint, they are better than a lot of conventional shoes because they can be recycled easily and cost effectively. If they had become even more popular than they did, I would expect to see drop boxes outside of stores for worn out Crocs. I don’t have any statistics for recycling rates for Crocs. I am guessing that a lot of them are taking up space in the backs of closets and that plenty of pairs are also in landfills and in the environment. If Crocs had promoted its product as the ideal recyclable shoe, they might have sold better. Shoe companies that do promote green models often use recycled materials.

I cannot find any information that would indicate that Crocs highlighted recycling or that they facilitated it. Treehugger put in their two cents back when the trend was at its height. Some key points they made were that they are lightweight and made in an efficient way. A big drawback that Treehugger noted was the over consumption of Crocs resulting from their trendiness and cheapness. In addition to the 8 million real Crocs per year, counterfeiters were adding plenty of plastic shoes as well. Crocs is or has been fighting 11 different companies who allegedly infringed on their proprietary process. I am pretty sure the items in my photo are Crocoffs.