Zouri

The soles are as interesting as the sneakers, and that’s the biggest compliment you can pay to Zouri. Adriana Mano and António Barros’ brand integrates plastic collected on the beaches into its shoes, and that’s what you see underneath, thanks to the transparency of the rubber: colorful pieces that were once buoys, nets and other fishing-related waste.
The two partners met at a shoe company in Braga and got together to channel their common passion for nature through shoes. Initially, the idea was to build a sandal similar to the Japanese ones (from which the name Zouri comes) entirely out of reused plastic. Irony: in a world flooded with this petroleum product, the material was not the most suitable. “It’s heavy, breakable and has an abrasion that makes it wear out easily,” explains Adriana.

The solution, found with the support of the University of Minho and a factory in Felgueiras, was then to crush the plastic and incorporate it into the normally translucent natural rubber soles. What plastic? What is collected on Portuguese beaches, because it is local, and because it is a “very degraded and dirty plastic, which is not accepted by recycling companies and usually ends up in landfills”, when it is not simply left in the sea.
In Zouri’s first sandals, launched in 2018 after a crowdfunding campaign, part of the ton and a half of garbage collected was used in a large cleaning action promoted by the Municipality of Esposende throughout the county’s coast. The amount of plastic used in each pair depends on the size of the shoe, but “the average is equivalent to six bottles”.
Handcrafted in the Guimarães area, the brand’s sneakers, sandals and flip-flops also use other environmentally friendly materials such as cork, jute, organic cotton and, more surprisingly, piñatex, an imitation leather made from leaves. pineapple (and the only material that has to come from abroad, in this case from Barcelona).
In the name of transparency (not just the sole), each pair sold brings a card with the materials used, the names of those involved in the production and the date the plastic was collected. “Basically, we want to create a trend in which people are concerned about what they are wearing”, concludes Adriana. “Like in food.”