Gillian Boucher, sustainability manager at Kiwi footwear firm Orba - one of the company's first employees - explains how the business, run from the Kapiti Coast, runs operations remotely in Indonesia.
What does your business do?
Orba is a start-up, starting off as an eco-footwear company. Footwear is the beginning but it is not going to the end. What we're doing is experimenting with what is considered unusual materials for the footwear industry; materials that are plant-based, bio-degradable and highly renewable. We've launched our Orba Ghost casual sneaker in September of last year and our goal was to remove all plastics and synthetics from the shoes and be challenged by making shoes out of plant-based and biodegradable materials.
What was the motivation for starting Orba?
Orba was birthed at the beginning of lockdown. One of our founders, who is a Kapiti-based man Greg Howard, was over in Indonesia working with the other founder Marshall Westlake. Marshall has been involved in the Indonesian footwear industry since the early nineties - they are now the world's sixth-largest footwear producer Indonesia, and their goal and vision was to make the most sustainable shoe they possibly could; based on minimising waste. Waste has been a hot topic all over the world now for quite a few years but the apparel and footwear industry really has a lot to answer for when it comes to waste and the type of materials they use to make products, and Marshall, when he first moved to Indonesia in 1991 commented that a lot of packaging was banana leaf packaging and they would just toss that in the backyard and it wouldn't be there in the not-so-distance future, and then plastic came onto the scene and the waste in Java now is overwhelming and he didn't want to continue to be part of that. Orba all started with an aspirational goal but making it a reality has been pretty challenging.