Founded in 2005 in Kenya by Julie Church, a marine conservationist born and bred in Kenya, Ocean Sole is sandal recycling startup that collects discarded sandals along Kenya’s coastlines and waterways to make toys, sculptures, art, ,gifts, home decoration and jewellery among others.After collecting disposed sandals, talented African artisans transform them into colorful handmade toy animals or jewellery thereby earning an income and at the same time conserving the environment.
The firm’s artisans create masterpieces for sale across the world from over 400,000 kilos of recycled rubber waste a year.
According to the founder, “We clean beaches and create masterpieces. We are passionate about the ocean, we recycle old flipflops that were previously blighting waterways and beaches.The recycled flipflop create awareness of our human footprint.”
Ocean Sole says the thousands of discarded flipflops are disturbing phenomenon in East Africa and wash up on our shorelines creating an environmental disaster, hazardous to marine wildlife and sanitation. The firm therefore collects the plastic soles from beaches and waterways, transports them to their workshops and through craftsmanship transforms the wasted flipflops into colourful pieces of art.