Green Footing Part Deux: Local Shoe Subdue
Editor’s note: On Monday, we published the first part of Travis Brown’s “Green Footing” series on sustainablog. As part II (or “deux”) focuses on “green footing” in Lawrence, KS, it seemed fitting for Ecolocalizer. Travis is a student in Professor Simran Sethi’s Media and the Environment course at the University of Kansas, and originally published this post to the course blog on Tuesday, March 11, 2008.
On Monday, I took a broad look at America’s shoe problem.
Now I’d like to take things down a notch and look at the shoe bid’ness on the local level.
Arensberg’s Shoes has been operating in Lawrence since 1956. The family-owned store sells about 8,000 shoes a year.
I worked as a sales associate at Arensberg’s for 11 months. I have the utmost respect for the store and the management. They are the only shoe store that I have ever been to where the employees genuinely care about the health, comfort and satisfaction of their customers. However, I think the business could make simple changes that would significantly alter their environmental impact.


