Benjie recycles its shoe!

Making things better

We are Julien and Christian, from Benjie of Switzerland, the Swiss children’s shoe brand.

Benjie of Switzerland is a beautiful adventure driven by the idea of combining entrepreneurial success with common good. We are a B-Corp certified company, which guarantees highest social and environmental standards.

For the past 5 years we have been collecting used pairs of Benjie shoes in our Geneva store and donating them to Swiss charities. But those that are too damaged end up in the garbage, as do nearly 20 million pairs per year in Switzerland, according to our calculations.

What a pity… Making a new pair of Benjie from used pairs, that is our real goal! But we had to face one difficulty: a pair of shoes is made of about 15 different materials… impossible to recycle… Well no, we found a solution to recycle them

A revolutionary sole

By crushing the whole shoe (we just remove the metal), we obtain a powder which is mixed with latex to make a new sole! To ensure the good flexibility and robustness of the sole, the final material will be a mixture composed of: 30% of this crushed material, 20% of recycled synthetic rubber and 50% of recycled natural rubber.

Our project is to collect the shoes our store and retail partners and to return once a year all the used shoes to the factory in Portugal. We will only take back Benjie shoes because we are sure that they meet the MACH standards, which are very strict for children in terms of toxicity.

To make these soles, we need to make molds. However, they are very expensive (10.000 CHF per mold: design, prototyping and manufacturing) and we need one mold per shoe size. Our idea is to start with our first steps sole which covers 6 sizes: 18,19,20,21,22,23.

• By collecting 30.000.- the project can be launched because we cover the heart of the first step segment, that is to say 3 sizes: 20, 21 and 22.
• If we collect 60.000.- we can ensure the whole first steps sector with the 6 sizes.
• If we collect 90.000.- we can launch the study on the children’s segment and even buy the first molds from 24 to 27.

For your help: incredible subscriptions!

We need your help to buy these molds…

In return for your help, we have created incredible subscription packages: bronze, silver, gold and platinum. They offer discounts between 20 and 500 CHF.

You will be sure to have great Benjie shoes for your child for many years to come.

We also offer collector’s items such as the SWISS RECYCLED ICON, a unique and numbered piece of art created by Christian especially for the project. Find out more here

And finally, because there is no small help… we also have Benjie leather key rings.