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Indosole - The name of our brand pays homage to the Indonesian artisans, for it is their resourceful spirit which led to the inception of Indosole.
When our founder, Kyle Parsons, had the privilege to stumble upon their sandal with soles made from motorcycle tires, he was so inspired by the ingenious behind it that before he knew it, he set in motion the Indosole mission - to alleviate Indonesia from its dire tyre problem one repurposed tire sole at a time.
Unfortunately, tire waste is not the only thing Indonesia is drowning in.
The all too familiar plastic waste problem continues to scourge the rivers of Indonesia, especially due to being a monsoon country. Their plastic crisis even induced the government to declare a trash emergency in 2017.
Growing up in Bali, Sam, Gary and Kelly were no stranger to the abject devastation plastic pollution inflicts. The constant sight of it at their own shores was so provoking, they started ‘Make a Change Bali’ at the young ages of 12, 14 and 16 respectively.
In 2019, they launched Sungai Watch - a remarkable community river cleanup organisation. With the aim to conserve waterways through the interception of plastic waste, they have embarked on fulfilling this mission from the riverbanks of Indonesia.
Their dedicated team and their rapidly growing volunteer base conduct cleanups at rivers of all shapes and sizes, rain or shine, everyday of the week. They are deploying simple yet effective solutions like setting up barriers across the river to further impede plastic waste from entering the ocean. If their Before and After clean-up shots on Instagram are anything to go by, the impact their cleanups have is nothing short of spectacular.
What’s more is that they do it in similar ways too.
Sungai Watch recently had a breakthrough with their very first trash barrier made 100% from recycling plastic bags collected from their very own clean up crew. This enables them to switch out the metal frames in their existing barriers for this upcycled plastic bag one - making the system fully circular.
We had a very similar breakthrough when we developed our Sole Engineered Tire Technology (SETT), which forever transformed our production process to be that much more circular.
In addition, Sungai Watch has released a River Plastic report where they dive into the work they put into protecting Bali’s waterways. Based on manually collected data - every piece of plastic trash they pick up goes through a sorting and brand audit process - the report documents over 400 brands.
Every single brand is notified, where the data can trigger much needed conversations about the journeys of plastic and how they can ensure that the destination is a couple ways away from the ocean.
As a business entity ourselves, we constantly strive to be a force of good instead. Being a B corporation adhering to strict environmental and social standards, it is safe to say that we have made good progress in that department.
As a solutions company we also feel a responsibility to help out wherever we can, and we recently did this by collaborating with Room4Dessert and putting a portion of our sales towards meals for Balinese hospitality workers who were unemployed due to covid.
Every Indosole slipper you have owned and will ever own will always be ethically made by Indonesian people and will be made for the Indonesian people and landscape. We will always applaud organisations who intend to do the same too.
