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you might think you can't turn a flip-flop into a piece of art but you would be so so wrong the team of sculptors at oceansol in nairobi kenya carves the most common footwear on the planet into hippos giraffes whales and more and so far the company says it has cleaned up around 10 million sandals from beaches streets and landfills they cost like a dollar the problem with that is they break very easily so what you have is a huge menace flip-flops everywhere in fact in some parts of the world flip-flops make up nearly a quarter of ocean plastic can a team of hand-carving artisans make a dent in such a huge source of litter we went to nairobi to see how ocean soul makes art using worldwide waste this style of sandal is some of the oldest footwear we have dating back thousands of years as plastic became cheaper toward the end of the 20th century foam flip-flops took off today we make over one billion of them every year but most don't last long that means a lot of flip-flops end up in landfills and waterways in kenya the coasts are often littered with them so treasures come from even as far as from india philippines to over here so sometimes we are shocked we have a network of collectors that collect flip flops from our weekly beach cleanup efforts at the coast of kenya when you bring the flip flops to us we pay you an equivalent of 30 cents us per kilogram you'd need to bag more than 25 pairs to make the minimum daily wage of a typical worker in nairobi all told collectors usually bring in about one ton of flip-flops per week that's more than three thousand sandals first the shoes go through a thorough hand wash using water and detergent we live in a very hot climate it takes probably two to three hours for them to dry and then our artists will come to pick them and use them to make the sculptures for small and medium sculptures workers die cut the flip-flops into templates then use a non-toxic glue to bind the shoes together we're using a tiny flip flop so you have to build up before you're able to carve down then our artists will carve them out into a finished product the company has around 90 employees many of their artists used to make traditional kenyan wood carvings but that kind of work has dwindled since the early 2000s when kenya scaled back logging which made raw materials harder to come by when i used to do woodworking i never thought of discussion of environment these artists say working with a softer material isn't too different from working with wood the knives and sanding tools are the same but you do get fewer splinters the end product will be a crab it takes almost two hours to complete a piece for larger pieces artists repurpose old insulation from shipping containers as a base and cover them with flip-flops and that's why with the bigger sculptures you'll notice that they have a contour look while with the smaller ones there's a stripey look nearly every part of the process is done by hand and it can take up to three months to complete some of the larger pieces the only time we use a machinery is when we come here to sand so after they're done coming with a knife they'll come here and sit down and use these standing machines to smoothen the sculptures i'm gonna walk out of here because it's too noisy the company keeps a stock of marine animals like turtles and whales in keeping with the clean ocean theme there's also safari-inspired carvings like elephants and giraffes which are the best sellers people say that they love them because of their twisted necks and they also have beautiful eyelashes the sandal shavings get repurposed we have a shirt in the back that shreds them into smaller pieces like this and from here we're able to make mattresses that we donate to a refugee program in northern kenya next comes a quality control check the lady will make sure that you know the elephant has two ears two eyes one tail if anything is not right it's returned back to the artist where they'll fix it then the statues are washed one more time before being shipped to their destinations the plastic and rubber often used in flip-flops poses a unique danger to marine life they actually target plastic thinking that is food the smaller fish having digested plastic tends to be buoyant in that they are not able to dive down into the ocean because of that light material in their stomach julie church the conservationist who founded ocean soul got inspired after a visit to the kenyan coastline in 1997.
she noticed that a lot of kids were making toys out of discarded flip-flops and from there she got an idea that she could actually replicate the same model now the team collects and carves more than 700 000 flip flops a year and the pope himself was presented with an elephant carving when he visited kenya in 2015. so this is the gift that i hope will accompany you on your very important journey through life joe and his artists aren't the only ones who've noticed the world's massive flip-flop problem firms big and small have introduced flip-flops made from motion plastic and even flip-flops made from algae that are 100 biodegradable the company sells about a third of the pieces to shops museums aquariums and zoos around the world they're also sold online in a store in northeast florida and in gift shops around nairobi we saw that there was a niche and there was business to be made and that's how we started it we had a rhino the same size as this lion and it it was going for 43 200.
i'm looking for antelopes and maybe zebras to talk to my friends did you know it's from gabit no i had no idea about that but they are so beautiful but the combination of covet and the war in ukraine has brought on new challenges our hardest duty right now is actually getting our stuff from kenya to abroad the supply chain has been really messed up the company told us their shipping costs have nearly tripled and things take about four times as long to get where they're going occasionally ocean soul takes on special projects in 2019 we made a life-size car for a dealership in alabama united states so that's the biggest piece we've ever made we used 4 500 flip flops and that project took us about three to four months to complete there we go joe wishes he didn't have so much material to work with flip-flop waste is a global problem we have received numerous inquiries from india indonesia brazil they have the same problem they've asked us where can we come and set up shop in their countries but the ocean soul model might present the most effective use of flip-flop waste the foam material forming the flip flop is an irreversible process when a company comes up with a way of using the flip flop the whole piece as it is it's a big advantage until they run out of material artists like david will continue turning trash into treasure one shoe at a time yeah i'm very proud of the work we do because when we recycle the flip flops we save the environment and also people admire what we make you
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