The quixotic thought leaders at MIT’s Climate Project are riding a new green hobby horse. It’s called The Footwear Collective (FTC). Our virtuous do-gooders are determined to re-engineer the $463 Billion shoe industry to make its products recyclable.

You see, the industry manufactures 20 billion pairs of shoes a year, almost all of which end up in landfills. This deeply offends professional sustainability zealots and their circular economic planning. The fact that the materials that make up shoes start in the ground and end up back in the ground is inherently wicked and must be stopped.

Do you know what most normies would find even more offensive than manufacturing bazillions of shoes just to satisfy the fashion cravings of conspicuous consumers? More than a billion people don’t even buy a single pair of shoes each year while rich people hog the rest.

How can such systemic Shoe Inequity be ignored?

Consider the prodigious expense, effort, and coercive forces required to reengineer the manufacturing practices and supply chains of the super competitive and hyper cost-conscious shoe manufacturers in China, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, and Bangladesh, where 87% of the world’s shoes are produced. Now consider that these regions contain 80% of the people who only buy one or fewer pairs of shoes per year.

Attention Dr. Yuley Fuentes-Medel. Instead of spewing a 64-page Footwear Manifesto pandering to elite professors who make careers out of designing imaginary utopias, how about directing your energies to putting new shoes on the feet of the sweatshop workers who make $2 a day producing them?

You can thank the Beaver later for raising your consciousness.