SAVE THE OCEAN PROJECT

Plastic is destroying our planet

 

Over 100 billion garments are produced every year and over 60% are made from synthetic materials made out of plastics that will end up in landfills or the ocean and will take hundreds of years to decompose. As much as 35% of microplastics found in the ocean come from synthetic clothing.

 

Every year more that 8 million tons of plastic waste are dumped into our oceans contaminating and killing thousands of species.

 

The Dolfie STO project was born out of our desire to help with the preservation of the environment. This is one of our most ambituious projects.  Dolfie sneakers made out of plastic collected from the Mediterranean Sea and transformed into high-quality recycled yarn (SEAQUAL Certification Number 19WJGISB01). About 7 bottles of plastic goes into each pair of sneakers.

Thanks to a global network of fishermen who collect millions of plastic bottles and micro-plastics from the sea and thanks to the innovation and effort, these plastics can be recycled into quality fabrics to allow us to create a range of awesome and inspiring Dolfie Sneakers.

This way we can give plastic a second life and clean our oceans

HEMP SERIES

Cannabis: The Superstar of the Natural Fibers

 

Hemp is a sustainable and eco-friendly fabric whose cultivation is respectful with the environment. 

 

It´s a natural plant-based fiber that will keep you warm in winter and cool during summer and can even prevent you from UV rays. The main reason why hemp is considered the most eco-friendly crop is because it needs no pesticides in its cultivation and it does not require a lot of water to grow (50 % less than cotton). Hemp is also renewable, good for the soil as it returns 60/70% of the nutrients it takes from the land with each growth cycle.

 

The Dolfie Hemp Series were created after considering hemps potential to mitigate climate change as one of the greatest opportunities of our generation, given all of its incredible characteristics that make it such a great eco-frienly fabric. We wanted to contribute bringing Hemp to our collections for a more sustainable planet.

At Dolfie we want to create a new Vision…not only focus on craftsmanship and quality but also make products with an entire fair and sustainable lifecycle. That is what we want to achive. 

 

We want to provoke your senses and evoke your emotions, we are all artists, visionaries, we envision worlds and we create and get lost so deep, into something beautiful, in a place not to be found, in paradise, that when we submerge it´s like rebirth, like pure adrenaline, like fire in your HEART 

RECYCLED COTTON

Reduce Reuse Recycle

 

Dolfie uses several types of recycled and transformed materials.

Recycled cotton is made from used cotton garments that where thrown away, treated and reoperated in order to get back the best properties.

The fashion industry is the second most pollutant in the world. The rise of social media, online shopping and influencer advertising (which encourages to buy, wear it once, post it on Instagram and get rid of it), has created the throwaway culture that we live in today. We buy five times more clothing now than we did in the 80s, meaning that of the roughly 100 billion garments made every year, a vast amount are thrown away and consumers are left to buy new ones, contributing to the production cycle and the continuous destruction of our planet.

Using Recycled cotton from used garments is DOLFIE´S commitment to minimize the environmental impact, reducind the need to burry those textiles in landfills or ending up in the oceans. 

We love this planet and want to maintain it as good as we can.

NOTE: Buy a pair of sneakers and wear them out until you need a new pair.

Become a Concious Consumer… a MINIMALIST

FOR A BETTER WORLD

 

ECOLOGICAL LEATHER

We care about this planet and its existing SPECIES

 

When it comes to leather, Dolfie faces a huge CONTROVERSY: make shoes and sneakers out of Animal Leather or make them with Synthetic materials.

At Dolfie, both of the founders are Vegetarian mainly for respect for animals. We  believe animals should not be hurt, much less killed to be eaten. We don´t need them to survive so there´s no reason for them to suffer or die.

Yet we make leather shoes. What a contradiction! 

Why do we use animal leather then?

This is the choice we have been adopting for now as we consider that animal leather nowadays is still the better option.

Synthetic leather, also called vegan leather, is not really an option for us. Vegan leather is mainly  produced from materials like polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and polyurethane (PU) which is equal to PLASTICS, which pollute and destroy the planet and it´s a great cause of extinction of many animal species. Today, 94% of sneakers on the market are composed of plastics. We refuse to add to this environmental catastrophy. Also, the difference in quality, softness, and flexibility of Synthetic Leather is definitely worse. It´s also remarkably cheaper which makes people buy more and throw more adding to the environmental degradation.

Cows don’t die to become a pair of shoes. This by no means alleviates our concern over animal cruelty, but we make sure that all leather used in our collections is derived from the food industry, with legal certification, never intended for fashion in any way. We have promised ourselves and to YOU our full commitment in ensuring that our products do not contribute to the abuse or animal exploitation. The materials used in our products are carefully inspected and only reused after verifying its treatment and history.

Furthermore, 88% of all the leather we used is Ecological carefully selected and sourced locally from some of the best tanneries in Southern Europe. Our ecological leather is a genuine leather but the tanning process is vegetal, containing no chemicals in order to reduce the environmental impact and protect you and our planet.  What is tanning? It´s the procese of transforming animal skins into actual leather. Most brands use the cheapest and not surprisingly most toxic method of leather tanning available: named chrome tanning which uses many harmful chemicals that can casue massive environmental impacts. On the contrary, vegetable tannin is eco-friendly. It´s a natural process free of toxics and chemicals made with organic substances present in trees and plants. Vegetable tanned leather takes up to two months to develop in a process that is done by hand.

Ultimately then, we believe that vegetable tanned leather is as of today by far a better sustainable option. It has also the ability to be recycled and re-used for a much longer period of time. Ecological Leather can also decompose whether Faux leather, on the other hand, won’t decay for hundreds of years. 

We don’ want to encourage the killing of animals and the use of animal products that is why we are in continuous research for new alternative non-toxic planet friendly materials as substitutes for animal leather to avoid being part of the animal exploitation and at the same time not adding to the contamination of our Environment.

The real question we should be asking, then, isn’t whether to use animal leather or vegan leather, it’s thinking about the entire lifecycle of the product, about how long it will last and what will happen when you throw it away.

It’s naïve to make empty promises or make you believe that we will change this world…although, we will never give up trying

 

SUSTAINABLE & HANDMADE