Eco-friendly shoes have a reputation for being, well, less than stylish. If green fashion is really going to make a difference, eco-friendly shoes need to compete with their conventional counterparts aesthetically as well as materially.

Puma, makers of the perennially-cool, soccer style shoes and accessories, recently announced that it's toying with the idea of adding "compostable" to its product's list of accomplishments.

The company is already a quiet but powerful green innovator in the fashion industry, having recently unveiled its "Clever Little Bag," a shoebox replacement made from 65 percent less paper as well as reduced amounts of water, energy and diesel fuel, and a vegan version of its signature suede sneaker that features recycled materials.

But apparently, that's not green enough for Puma.

"We are confident that in the near future we will be able to bring the first shoes, T-shirts and bags, that are either compostable or recyclable, to the market," Puma boss Franz Koch told the German business magazine Wirtschaftswoche.

So soon, instead of holding on to spent shoes or pawning them off on the local thrift store, you could just bury them in a compost pile along with apple peels and coffee grounds.

Even though Puma may be the biggest company to set its sights on compostable footwear, they're certainly not the first. Dutch label OAT has a range of sneakers that sprouts flowers when you bury them below ground, while OneMoment’s biodegradable slip-ons require only six months to break down in your compost pile.

Image Credit: Flickr - flo_and_me
Via The Guardian and Ecouterre