Am I the only one losing sleep over my Vibram soles committing eco-crimes one step at a time?
So we all know Leave No Trace, right? Pack it in, pack it out, don’t disturb the soil crust, blah blah. Cool. Love that for us.
But nobody talks about the fact that our $200 trail runners are basically confetti cannons of microplastic, quietly seeding every switchback from here to Kilimanjaro with tiny bits of themselves. Every step is a tiny act of littering that we’ve all just agreed to ignore because the shoe is “on” us and not “left behind.”
I did the math (I did not do the math) and conservatively my pair has shed enough rubber over 400 trail miles to reconstitute one (1) sad flip-flop. Multiply that by every hiker on the PCT and we’re basically leaving a plastic breadcrumb trail from Mexico to Canada.
Do I need to Leave No Trace my own shoe rubber? Should I be carrying a tiny broom? Is “biodegradable soles” a market someone’s sitting on? Asking the real questions here.
Anyway see you on the trail, quietly polluting it with my footwear like a responsible outdoorsperson.