VEJA: That' how cool fair sneakers are

"Look" - that's what VEJA meant in Portuguese. And this is exactly what Sébatien François-Ghislain, the founders of the sustainable sneaker label VEJA, want to achieve. That we look at how a sneaker is produced.

The two school friends Sébastien and François-Ghislain set out in 2004, with only 5,000 euros in their pockets, to find cotton cooperatives for the production of fair canvas fabric in northern Brazil. For the sole of their sneakers, they only wanted pure natural rubber and therefore visited the Amazon region of Acre.

They also used their stay in Brazil to calculate the exact price for their VEJA sneakers. So that the people who produce the raw material and the shoe are fairly remunerated.

Based on this knowledge, the high-quality fairtrade VEJA sneakers, which are now known worldwide, are produced in Brazil to this day. The production costs of a VEJA sneaker are about five to seven times higher than those of a sneaker from other well-known brands. Veja, for example, pays farmers about three times the world market price for their organic cotton. How does this work? No advertising and no overproduction. So VEJA can put all its money into the production costs of the shoes, use sustainable and ecologically harmless materials and pay fair wages to its workers.

The leather is obtained from Uruguay - where no jungle is cleared for cattle farms, and it is tanned without the addition of chemicals with acacia extract. All steps in the production chain, from the cotton harvest in Ceará to the headquarters in Paris, are certified by the independent international certification company Flo-Cert.

The VEJA sneakers are shipped in recycling cartons to Le Havre and then on to Paris. VEJA also receives a sympathy bonus from us for external logistics: it is operated by the "Sans Frontiers" organisation, a project that reintegrates unemployed addicts.

We are self-confessed VEJA fans - and you?