So allow us to take you back 25 years - or one year ago if you had the smarts to take yourself to see the Beyoncé version - to the wise teachings of Mufasa (RIP):

“When we die, our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eat the grass. And so we are all connected in the great Circle of Life”. Damn that was one wise lion.

In much the same way, in a Hakuna Matata world where polar bears have enough ice to have multiple daily snowball fights and avocado trees can keep up with the smashed avo demands of Melbourne cafés, there too would exist a Circle of Fashion, where when a piece of clothing “died”, it would either be taken back into the earth to nourish it, or it would be put back into the cycle and used to create a piece of clothing that could then again be worn.

Sadly, right now this isn’t the case. We take resources from our home girl Earth, we turn those resources into stuff, and then we throw said stuff in the trash when we’re done with it. The End.

Now then, sit back and relax (or freak out) while we throw some facts your way…

Approximately 90% of shoes end up in landfill, where they can take 30-1000 years to break down depending on what they’re made of. Yep you read that right,1000 years (in case you need a visual: cut to robot aliens walking around in the year 3019 in that pair of $30 heels you bought and wore once to a wedding).

Even scarier, 24 billion pairs of shoes were produced in 2018, so some fast maths that we totally did in our heads (okay fine phone calculated) might estimate that over 21 billion of those are already in, or are destined for, landfill.

Even WE’RE shocked reading back over those stats, and we’re the ones who wrote them.

So what the Pumbaa can we do about it?

Make less stuff? Absolutely.

Buy less stuff? Now you’re getting the hang of it.

But there’s something else... something more, circley shaped.

We’ve introduced a serious program with an even more serious name, known as TAKESIES BACKSIES. We offer customers a $10 voucher in exchange for sending back their old shoes rather than sending them to landfill, allowing us to breathe new life into those well-worn babies.

Right now that new life looks like children’s playground mats. Behind the scenes, we’re working on that new life looking like yoga mats... and then eventually one day we hope that new life could look like new TWOOBS.

So if you’re keen to make mama earth and papa Mufasa proud, send an email to welovepandas@twoobs.com and our Customer Kindness team will give you the deets on how you can get involved.

And if you have your own brand, watch Dame Ellen Macarthur’s TED talk about how she started thinking circular here, and start to consider how you too could turn that line into a loop.

Sing it with us: It’s the cirrcccclle.... The circle of fashion.