This blog was written by Francisca Apparcel, co-founder of Chiloteshoes.
At ChiloteShoes we are not just a fashion brand, we are a social and inclusive venture that empowers artisan women in Patagonia. We were founded based on the idea that there is a need to change the conventional way of doing business.
Artisan Women of Patagonia, Chile creating the slippers by hand
Being proudly certified as a Chilean B-Corp since November 2016, our involvement with the B-Corp movement is a huge motivation to continuously improve our practices and use business as a force of good. The rigour of the B-Corp assessment instils accountability and challenges us to do better. Most B-Corps set new goals for improved scores with each assessment. We aim to inspire individuals and institutions and look to further implement solutions that contribute to solving the challenges we face.
Last November, our co-founder Francisca Apparcel had the opportunity to assist at Sustainable Brands in Copenhagen, where she had the great luck of being introduced to Ecosphere+ and its projects in Peru. Since then, we started a conversation that helped us understand the role of rainforests on the fight against climate change, as well as its importance for local livelihoods and biodiversity. Working with Ecosphere+, we learned that we can not only improve our business operation and deliveries, but we can also make a positive social and environmental contribution, providing a real solution to climate change by supporting their forest conservation projects.
Although we aim to keep our impact of the environment minimal, due to customers from around the globe wanting our hand crafted, ethically produced products, and with these deliveries making up the largest proportion of our carbon footprint, these emissions are unfortunately inevitable. But by working with Ecosphere+ we can proudly say we offset every kg of CO2 released into the atmosphere due to our production and deliveries in 2017, and we are committed to do it every year. By doing this, together with our customers, we guarantee that every purchase has a positive social and environmental impact.
Thanks to this collaboration, whenever our customers across the world buy a pair of ChiloteShoes, we know that together we are helping save the threatened rainforest. Each pair of ChiloteShoes is not only ethically handmade by artisan women in Patagonia, it is also Climate+* and every single delivery is carbon neutral.
By supporting the Cordillera Azul project, located in the northern Peruvian Amazon, each pair of slippers we deliver helps protect the habitat of animals like the Spectacled bear, improve local small farmers agricultural practices and stops deforestation.
*based on estimations, we offset all the emissions related to our operation and products.
