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Australian footwear label Twoobs has relaunched its entire collection in an effort to become more environmentally friendly. 

The brand, which has an aim to become Australia's most sustainable footwear brand in 2021, relaunched its entire collection with a range of sandals made from recycled plastic and yarns. 

To make the shift, founders Jess and Stef Dadon cancelled their initial order of 22 on-trend styles in favour of an eight-piece minimalistic range, in a move towards slow fashion. 

Spurred on by a drop in sales during the pandemic, the sisters reassessed their goals for the brand, recognising that urgent action is needed to reduce the fashion industry's impact on the environment. 

Speaking on the decision, the Dadon sisters said it was a move they'd been slowly working towards over the years. 

"We’d known it was a direction we wanted to go in for about a year already, and we’d slowly been taking baby steps towards the goal.

"But we were caught up in the day-to-day of solid sales from customers loving our offering, and stockists pushing for more and more trend-driven styles.

"But then, like it had been planned by Mother Earth and Greta Thunberg themselves, 2020 hit a pause button on orders from retailers and tumbleweeds blew across our website, making it glaringly obvious to us that now was the time," they said. 

The Dadon's added that there were three key areas they could make immediate change to become more eco-friendly. 

"After doing some research, we realised that in order to make the switch immediately there were a few changes we could implement for the coming season.

"[This included]; cutting down the amount of styles we were ordering to avoid waste (particularly given the uncertainty of sales in 2020; switching to materials made from recycled materials, which was only available in Lycra and not our leather-look style; and, ditching the trims, frills, jewels, and other fun bits that couldn’t be sourced from recycled materials, and couldn’t be recycled.

"So only five months later, we’ve launched a carefully curated eight-piece collection, with Lycra made from 88% recycled plastics and yarns (the highest % available for these materials).

"It’s a first step for us on a long road that is going to see a whole lot more sustainability practices come into our business, and a whole lot more fashion and fun styles to come later next year," the sisters said. 

Alongside the smaller range, the business is also now 100% carbon neutral and will move to satchel-free packaging. 

It is also set to launch a shoe-recycling program, offering consumers a $10 voucher for every pair of shoes sent in, with the returned shoes recycled into playground mats. 

The business is documenting the entire process on its new blog, A Kinda Blog, which details the steps the brand is taking in its mission, hoping to encourage others to do the same. 

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