Some of the best moments in our own lives have been outside, and we believe that the more people who can experience the outdoors, the better. For that reason, we enjoy the fact that Oboz shoes help equip people for their outdoor adventures. But we didn't want it to stop there. With the resources available to the Oboz team, we've put together a few projects that we’re pretty excited about.

ONE MORE TREE PROGRAM

Every time someone buys a pair of our shoes, we’ll plant a tree. We’ve partnered with a group called Trees for the Future to make this happen. They’re an agricultural and forestry resource center that creates environmentally and economically sustainable land management projects based on tree planting. Founded in 1988, they’ve helped plant over 65 million trees in Central America, Asia and Africa. These trees have improved people’s lives and livelihoods in thousands of communities and remove nearly 1.5 million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere every year. Click here to see where trees have been planted.

CLEAN ENERGY & OFFSETS

We realize the destruction associated with carbon output and have made efforts to minimize the impact that Oboz has on climate change. The most important step is reduction, and we’ve analyzed our actions and cut where we could. For instance, we're members of the EPA Green Power Partnership by sourcing 100% the electricity for the Oboz office from a wind farm in northern Montana. The EPA Green Power Partnership encourages the voluntary use of green power to reduce the risk of climate change.

Since day one, we've offset the carbon that we produce after our reduction strategies. Our most recent donation has been to NativeEnergy in support of the Greensburg Wind Farm Project. After a tornado completely destroyed Greensburg, KS, the residents decided to rebuild the town as the greenest town in the US. In addition to their new LEED certified buildings and LED street lights, they are building a wind farm with enough electricity generated to supply every home, business and municipality in the town.

GREATER YELLOWSTONE COALITION

Oboz has partnered with the Greater Yellowstone Coalition in order to protect the lands, water and wildlife of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The GYC has been a pioneer in defining and promoting the concept of ecosystem management. The GYC engages in a wide variety of efforts to improve land management in the Yellowstone region so the area's forests, streams, wildlife and other natural features will flourish for the enjoyment of future generations.

Get Involved!

-Become a member or donate to GYC
-Visit GYC's Action Page
-Sign up to receive GYC's E-News
-Follow GYC on Facebook
-Get informed and vote responsibly

SHOE RECYCLING

Coming back from lunch one day, I saw a small sign for the Uganda Orphans Fund in a window downtown. I thought that they might be interested in taking some of the shoes we had hanging around the office. They were and we’ve been able to periodically give them boxes upon boxes of shoes. The Uganda Orphans Fund is a non-profit organization seeking to improve the lives of Ugandan children who have become orphans due to HIV/AIDS and the 20 year Ugandan war that kidnapped and forced many young children to be soldiers or sex slaves. Currently, 2.5 million orphans live in Uganda, and this number is predicted to grow to 8-10 million within 10 years. UOF often joins with Ugandan based organizations and allows the continuing support to come from within the country.

Sometimes shoes lose their mate. We’ve sent all of our unmatched pairs of shoes to the National Odd Shoe Exchange and Soles4Souls. NOSE is a non-profit organization that distributes single shoes to amputees and those with dramatically different sized feet due to disease. Soles4Souls collects and distributes shoes to people in need both domestically and abroad.