Etnies: Buy A Pair Of Shoes, Plant A Tree

Online, April 6, 2011 (Newswire.com) - COMMITMENT - The shoe brand Etnies committed to planting 35,000 trees in the reserve Maleku, Costa Rica ...

The shoe brand Etnies, in collaboration with Costa Rica, the United Nations and UNESCO, began a large reforestation project to enable a native tribe, the Maleku, reborn from its ashes. In this International Year of Forests, the United Nations has decreed that their territory was to reconstitute a biological reserve.

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Etnies, founder and CEO, Pierre-Andre Senizergues, decided to look to the future. The brand is associated in Costa Rica, which is a "carbon neutral" by 2021, to fund the planting of trees needed by Maleku. This native tribe, whose way of life is centered around the forest, is best known as the "guardians of the forests." For over 150 years, they had to fight for trees, livestock and threatened by a terrible war of rubber, which ended in a massacre that nearly wiped out their tribe.

To do this, Etnies Launches "Buy a Shoe, Plant a Tree." For every pair sold Jameson 2 Eco Shoes, Etnies will plant a tree in what would become the new rainforest Maleku. Why this particular model? Because the sole of the shoe is made from old bicycle tires and rubber gloves worn, laces and PET from recycled plastic bottles.

This year, Etnies preparing to plant a minimum of 35,000 trees in the reserve Maleku in northern Costa Rica. Throughout their lives, those 35,000 trees will allow the absorption of about 6,930 tonnes of CO2, which is the equivalent of 465,051,360 Etnies shoe boxes placed end to end and wrapped around the earth more than 3.5 time.