Coffee Shoes — From Your Cozy Cup of Coffee to Shoes That Can Keep You Warm

Coffee can have multiple uses — it can boost energy levels, it can strengthen our DNA, and it can make us smarter and leaner among many other benefits. Another use that is interesting enough to make us go, “Wow!” is that it can make for an excellent prime material for producing shoes. Yes, you read that right — coffee grounds can be turned into your favorite pair of boots or shoes. One company is truly taking our coffee cups to the next level and here’s what you should know about it.

Bright Side loves to see designs that are in the best interests of Mother Earth and we thought you would want to be up to date with the latest interesting ones.

Cruelty-free, vegan, and sustainable fashion

Ccilu, a Japanese footwear brand, was launched in 2011 and today is sold in more than 60 countries around the world. Ccilu (CHEE-loo) means “liberate” in Japanese and “liberate yourself” is this company’s call to action — a reminder that we each possess the power to defy limitations.

The award-winning footwear company has made a new, vegan alternative to leather by creating what is called coffee yarn — yep, you guessed right, thread from coffee grounds. The company’s goal is to make sustainable footwear and more to help the planet breathe easier and to make our children’s lives longer.

One man’s coffee grounds are another man’s treasure.

Ccilu is a company that really takes the saying “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” literally. Their latest design, a pair of vegan leather boots XpreSole Panto, uses coffee in almost every part of the shoes, except for the laces which are made from recycled PET bottles. It takes 15 cups of recycled coffee to produce these boots.

These shoes are not the company’s first rodeo. In 2020, they designed XpreSole — the world’s first shoe made primarily from coffee. We invite you to watch their product video, it really impressed all of us at Bright Side and made us look at sustainable fashion and our classy cup of coffee with different, more curious eyes.

The process of producing the XpreSole Panto boots

The used coffee grounds are first collected from local coffee shops, dehumidified, ground, and then turned into pellets using a special technology. Then, a part of these pellets is transformed into thin yarn to create fabric and the rest of it is used in a unique molding process that results in a ready outsole and shell.

Get to know the XpreSole boots

The waterproof boots are flexible, lightweight — weighing only 230 grams — a third of the weight of traditional boots. They have been proven to keep your socks dry even through 100,000 steps and, fun fact, they have been machine-wash tested over 100 times without any damage. The lining of the shoe has anti-odor, anti-microbial, and moisture-wicking properties.

If you’d have to give up 15 cups of coffee for a free pair of shoes, what color shoes would you choose? How many pairs of boots do you own?

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