Managing the Environmental Impacts of Small Businesses Manufacturing Women’s Leather Dress Footwear in Colombia

Abstract

Given the growing global demand for footwear, its increasingly shorter life cycle, the billions of pairs of shoes sold and the negative environmental impacts in the shoe supply chain, this paper explores the negative environmental impact in the stages of the life cycle of leather dress footwear and proposals to reduce them, taking the process of manufacturing handmade women’s leather dress shoes in small Colombian companies as an example. The MET (material, energy, toxicity) matrix was used for the qualitative life cycle analysis along with information from unstructured interviews and from observing the production process. The actions to reduce environmental impacts were processed via a systematized information search. The results show that production and end of life stages have the greatest impacts, and actors in the supply chain must be integrated to effectively manage the materials. Furthermore, proposals to reduce negative environmental impacts were presented as a way to improve environmental performance.