Let’s Celebrate the Allbirds Zero Carbon M0.0Nshot Shoes

Plus, how to think about the coming criticism of this shoe.

Source: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/word-step-by-on-wooden-cubes-1801660663

Talk about a Bright Spot! Last week, Allbirds announced M0.0nshot, their – and the industry’s – first zero carbon shoe (unlike carbon neutral products that achieve net zero emissions through offsets, the materials that go into these shoes take carbon out of the atmosphere).

As I wrote recently, if shopping sustainably doesn’t bring joy, we have no chance of solving the climate crisis. Here are four reasons I’m excited about these shoes and why I encourage you to tamp down your internal skeptic:

1.    Courage – in business as in life, it’s always easier to fast follow than trail blaze. This is especially true in sustainability where there’s been a tremendous (and justified) focus on rooting out confusing and/or misleading sustainability claims (see here). While I don’t think that Allbirds is “greenwashing”, they are transparently deviating from the standard approach to product carbon footprinting to get to zero carbon. Most businesses lack the courage to push boundaries and welcome the scrutiny that comes with it; I applaud Allbirds for inviting it.  

2.    0 < 14 – The carbon footprint for an average pair of shoes is 14 kg C02e. Even if the M0.0Nshot carbon footprint increases to 1 kg C02e when the carbon accounting dust settles, that’s still about 90% lower than the industry average.

3.    Ripple Effects – The initial product launch will be small, but the second-order effects on suppliers will be huge. For example:

• All of the merino wool comes from a single farm in New Zealand with industry-leading sustainability practices. By encouraging other farms to adopt these practices, Allbirds said that 500 farms representing 15% of farmland in New Zealand have now enrolled in programs to implement similar processes. That's a lot of positive movement.

• The eyelets are from Mango Materials, a cool start up I’ve been following for years that converts methane from places like the landfill into a biodegradable replacement for plastic (PHA). The more that innovative materials show up in everyday products, the lower their costs will become – and the chances of those firms thriving increases.

4.    Price – Allbirds said that they would not sell M0.0nshots at a price premium. I’m sure that they could charge a massive premium, but they’ve decided not to. There are two ways to make money: profit per unit and the volume of sales. When it comes to sustainable products, my preference is always for the latter: let’s try to replace the conventional option with a price-competitive sustainable version for as many people as possible.

Via https://www.greenbiz.com/article/allbirds-shoe-no-footprint The left column shows the carbon footprint by lifecycle stage for a typical Allbirds Wool Runner. The right column is for M0.0nshot.

The Criticism: As you can see from the chart above, the dark yellow segment for the materials carbon footprint goes up from zero for typical Allbirds wool runners – and down below zero for M0.0nshot. Allbirds’ standard product carbon footprinting methodology is solid based on my reading; it conforms to the relevant ISO product carbon footprinting standard according to an independent third-party review. They even have a public Excel tool that enables other brands to adopt their product carbon footprinting methodology.

However, to get to zero carbon for M0.0nshot, Allbirds deviated from their own and the relevant ISO standard in their allocation of on-farm carbon sequestration. A few reasons why I’m ok with this:

• Transparency – they are going to publish their methodology, so people who want to go deep and compare it to the standard will be able to.

• Carbon Accounting is a work-in-progress – especially when it comes to things like farm and soil sequestration, the science continues to evolve.

• Action > Delayed Certainty – Over the long-term, carbon accounting needs to be as consistent and regulated as financial accounting. But we aren’t there yet. Until then, we should encourage companies to take bold actions that move us in the right direction as long as they are transparent about what they’ve done and how they've accounting for their impacts.

If Allbirds doesn't update its accounting for M0.0nshot based on the science evolving, I’ll criticize them for that. But until then, give me thoughtful and reasonable action over caution. The stakes are too high, and the cost of inaction are too great, to wait.

I plan to buy a pair when they come out.