The shoe may be called Green Silence, but Brooks’ new eco-friendly kickers don’t come quietly onto the green market — thanks to their dazzling yellow hue. As my fellow MNN blogger Shea Gunther says, these shoes should be renamed Yellow Scream!

While environmentalists may ponder why Brooks chose to make its greenest footwear look like a subliminal advertisement for McDonald’s, most will likely agree that Green Silence are about the greenest running shoes out there today. For one, the obnoxious yellow hue’s actually produced using non-toxic dyes and colorants!

Even ignoring the loud eco-color, Green Silence shoes do look decidedly different because it has half as many parts as a regular shoe, reducing the need for materials, energy, and glues. The shoe’s tongue, for example, is a continuous extension of the shoe’s outer side. What glued parts there are are kept together with water-based adhesives.

More impressively, 75% of the shoe’s made out of post-consumer recycled materials! Recycled CDs, for example, make up 50% of the shoe’s heel, while recycled rubber makes up 30% of the outsole. Most of the fabric part of the shoe’s made with a blend of recycled PET from used water bottles — with the laces, gillies (loops for shoelaces), and reinforced webbing being 100% recycled PET.

What’s not recycled is biodegradable — though obviously nowhere near as biodegradable as your average apple. According to Brooks, the midsole and insole break down “50 times faster than traditional midsoles in an enclosed, active landfill” — an interesting feat, although this does point out that the shoe will indeed end up in a landfill at the end of its life, as running shoes inevitably do. With that end in mind, Brooks has put together a helpful “Shoe Life Cycle” guide which shows people how to get the most out of their running shoes before sending them to the landfill.

I took the shoes out for a test run and liked the shoes’ light but cushioned feel! I was a little concerned that the semi tongue-less feature of the shoe might make them feel funny or unstable, but the shoes held firm. The permeable mesh uppers kept my feet cool too.

My main complaint: I had to stick to alleyways and unpopular streets so as not to blind anyone with my yellow feet — or unwittingly end up on a fashion faux-pas site, which is why the photo of the shoes above don’t have my feet in them. Seriously — The shoes look even more garish and bright in real life than in the photos!

Unfortunately, while the $100-a-pair Green Silence shoes will start shipping in their 100% post-consumer recycled box come February, they will not be offered in any other color combos. We’ll find out next month whether eco-conscious runners are willing to embrace looking like Ronald McDonald for the sake of the environment….

Earlier:
>> New Balance 070: Greener shoes for active eco-volunteers
>> Casual, everyday shoes for environmentalists

Top photo via Brooks; bottom photo by Siel

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