• Skip to content
  • Skip to footer
Men's Journal
  • Gear
    • Gear Box
    • Autos
    • Tech
    • Home & Lifestyle
    • Fitness
    • Outdoor
    • Reviews
  • Health & Fitness
    • Wellness
    • Workouts
    • Celebrity workouts
    • Ab workouts
    • Leg workouts
    • Total-body workouts
    • arms workouts
    • Chest workouts
    • Weight Loss
  • Adventure
    • Features
    • Trips
    • Guides
    • Lands Uncompromised
    • Outdoors
  • Food & Drink
    • Whiskey
    • Beer
    • Recipes
    • Cocktails & Spirits
    • Healthy Food
  • Style
    • Grooming
    • fashion
    • Watches
    • shoes
  • Travel
    • travel guides
    • 4-Day Weekends
    • National Parks
    • travel tips
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • Give a Gift
    • Subscriber Service
    • Shop Special Issues
    • Newsletter
    • Accessibility Statement
Inside the Brazilian Amazon With VEJA
  • This link opens in a new window
  • This link opens in a new window
  • This link opens in a new window
  • This link opens in a new window
  • Open Comments
veja
Photograph by John Lonsdale

Style

Inside the Brazilian Amazon With VEJA

by John Lonsdale
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)

IT’S A GRAY JUNE MORNING in Brazil’s Amazon, and Julio Barbosa de Aquino is carving a long, shallow line into a tree outside his home in the state of Acre. The tree’s bark looks like a patchwork quilt: Semi-horizontal and vertical grooves cover just about every inch you can see.

Seconds later, a white liquid that almost resembles Elmer’s glue fills the space where Barbosa has carved, and it flows down diagonally into a separate vertical line. Finally, a few beads drip into a small black bucket that’s attached to the bark.

This is the morning’s main event: This is how you get wild rubber.

julio-veja-rubber
Julio Barbosa demonstrates the proper way to carve the trees to extract the wild rubber outside his home in Brazil’s Amazon. Photographs by John Lonsdale

TO REACH THE CHICO MENDES EXTRACTIVE RESERVE where Barbosa lives, you have to drive down a long, bumpy dirt road until you reach a river. Then, a short boat ride across the water later, you climb up a steep path to the top of the hill. The Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve is named after Barbosa’s best friend, Chico Mendes, who led a peaceful movement in the ’80s to protect Acre’s rubber tapping community from deforestation and farming, and was killed in 1988. Today, Barbosa, 64, is the president of the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve Residents and Producers Association Xapuri, AMOPREX.

This is just one of eight associations where Veja, the sustainable French footwear brand, works with rubber tappers, or seringueiros, who collect wild rubber from the forest that goes into Veja’s popular lines of sleek and stylish sneakers like the Esplars, the Campos, and V-10s—all of which are made with the wild rubber.

“You need to get to the vein of the milk, but you cannot reach the tissue that is right behind,” says Barbosa, a few hours later while leading us on a nearly four-hour hike through the forest with the rubber tappers. It’s only part of a route the rubber tappers take every three days during the week. Along the way, they cut sections of the trees called “flags” to collect the rubber. “When they do this, there will be a scar,” he says. When a cut has gone too deep, the tree releases water, he explains. Instead, it’s better for the tree to make shallow cuts to get the rubber.

wild-rubber-veja
Wild rubber “cakes” in the town of Xapuri, Brazil, will eventually find their way into Veja’s line of stylish sneakers, including its new Condor running shoes. Photograph by John Lonsdale

From there, once collected and dry, wild rubber is sent to get processed, then it’s assembled with the sneakers in a factory in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

“We buy the wild rubber from Amazonia,” Veja co-founder Sébastien Kopp says during a break in our hike with the rubber tappers and Barbosa. “We buy the rubber coming from the trees from the forest, inside the forest. And this rubber becomes the soles of our shoes.”

veja-factory
A pair of Veja’s recently assembled in the brand’s factory in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Photograph by John Lonsdale

According to Kopp, each pair of Veja’s sneakers’ soles have about 20-40 percent of the wild rubber. “This year we’re going to buy 170 tons of wild rubber at a price that we call fair that has nothing to do with the market price, and that is how the rubber tapper can make a living out of it and can make a living better than raising cattle or cutting down the forest.

“Because the paradox is that [the rubber tappers] can be the destroyer of the forest if they don’t have an income, don’t earn money, they can cut the forest to sell the trees and put cattle,” he says. “But they can also be the guardians of the forest, and that’s the way we try to push them towards.”

veja co-founders
VEJA co-founders Sébastien Kopp (left) and François Ghislain Morillion (right) Courtesy VEJA

KOPP, ALONG WITH François Ghislain Morillion, founded Veja in 2005 and began working in Acre just a year earlier.

In 2007, Bia Saldanha, who lives in the Brazilian Amazon, started working as Veja’s wild rubber chain designer and coordinator to help streamline the production process. “My mission is to make sure that the relationship between the company and the rubber tappers is growing and being fair and healthy for both parts, especially for the rubber tappers,” says Saldanha.

veja
Bia Saldanha (left) and Sébastien Kopp (right) in the Brazilian Amazon. Courtesy Veja

After years of working in Acre, the brand’s work with the rubber tappers who help maintain the forest feels especially important today.

This summer, Brazil made headlines because of the Amazon’s wildfires. NASA could see the smoke from space, and the Amazon saw over an 80 percent increase in wildfires since this time in 2018, along with an increase in deforestation in June.

We try to say that a forest which is up has more value than a forest which is down.

“We don’t try to fight against deforestation. We try to valorize the forest,” Kopp explained to me on our walk through the forest, weeks before the wildfires made the news. “We try to say that a forest which is up has more value than a forest which is down. That’s what we’re trying to do with the rubber for 15 years. We’re trying to prove that you can make an economic value with the forest—but with the forest standing up.”

veja condor
Veja has launched its first running shoes, the Condor, which are designed with recycled plastic, wild rubber, and more. Courtesy VEJA

Now, months since Barbosa demonstrated how to properly collect wild rubber, Veja’s launching its next project: the brand’s first running shoes. The name: the Condor. Four years in the making, the Condors retail for under $150 and forego some of the materials and plastics you might find in other running kicks in your closet. These pack in an upper made of recycled plastic bottles, for example, along with organic cotton in the lining.

veja condor running shoes
Veja has launched its first running shoes, the Condors. Courtesy Veja

Morillion explains that, for the brand, the decision to eventually design running sneakers was “quite natural.” He says the Condors are built for running a 20K, or a half-marathon race.

veja condor
Veja’s new Condor running shoes include an outsole made with a mix of wild rubber, wild rice husk, and synthetic rubber. Courtesy Veja

The Condors’ outsole alone has 31 percent rice husk, 30 percent synthetic rubber, and 30 percent wild rubber that came from the Brazilian Amazon. The Condors are what Veja calls the “first post-petroleum running shoe”—a pair of sneakers that are 53 percent recycled and bio-based.

“We know we’re not 100 percent,” Morillion says, “but it’s the direction. And it’s really the goal that we want to reach.”

For access to exclusive gear videos, celebrity interviews, and more, subscribe on YouTube!

Want more?

Sign up for our newsletter to get the latest adventures, workouts, destinations, and more.

We may use your e-mail address to send you the newsletter and offers that may interest you, on behalf of Men's Journal and its partners. For more information please read our Privacy Policy

How we use your email address

You have successfully signed up.

More from Style
  • Expedition Jacket Stay Warm When You Trek Out Of The House With This Expedition Jacket
  • Moccasins These Moccasins On Sale At Zappos Are Perfect To Wear This Winter
  • Spanx Men's Line Grab Some Top Tier Comfort With The Reimagined Spanx Men’s Line
  • Sneaker-Boots Walk Around The City Or Hike The Trails With These Sneaker Boots
  • Madewell Secret Stock Sale Save Up To 70% At The Madewell Secret Stock Sale
  • Best White Sneakers The Best White Sneakers For Men Available At Zappos
  • Project Rock Collection Tackle The Winter With This Coat From The Project Rock Collection
  • Fourlaps Work From Home In Comfort And Style With The Help Of Fourlaps
  • Jack Mason Now Is The Time To Shop At Jack Mason For An Impressive Watch

Men’s Journal has affiliate partnerships so we may receive compensation for some links to products and services.

  • Privacy Policy
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Your Ad Choices
  • Data Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Customer Service
  • Media Kit
  • Sitemap
  • Our Team
Manage Cookies

A360 Media Active Lifestyle Group

© A360 Media LLC 2021

Powered by WordPress.com VIP

TAG Trustworthy Accountability Group TAG Trustworthy Accountability Group