Plasticana Hemp Gumboots

Plasticana Gumboot

Plasticana was founded in 1998 by the environmental “poet” André Ravachol, who’d hired a lab to help him develop a way to mix recycled vinyl with hemp to make an alternative plastic. Hemp, let it be known, is better than trees at sequestering carbon, and the European Industrial Hemp Association points out that the plant grows at a gallop, “making it one of the fastest CO2-to-biomass conversion tools available to us.” Ravachol took his ecofriendly material and applied it toward a line of unisex waterproof footwear: jelly-style sandals, mules, clogs, Chelsea boots, and country boots, all wholly recyclable.