SHOELAW

The main objective of the ShoeLAW Project is to develop an e-platform for environmental selfdiagnosis aimed at footwear companies in five European countries: Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece and Slovenia. These countries jointly represent 90% of European footwear industries.

Afterwards, the e-platform will extend to the rest of countries in the EU.

The creation of the above-mentioned e-platform will involve the achievement of the following objectives:

·  1st Promoting the effective application and execution of environmental legislation among European footwear companies.

·  2nd Improving the environmental situation of European footwear companies.

·  3rd Wide spreading the use of the e-platform among European footwear companies.

Most footwear companies in the project participating countries are SMEs, employing 10 to 20 workers per company. Nowadays, the European Small and Medium Sized companies operate within a “business culture” framework that does not consider planning environmental activities as a strategic variable for their medium and long term development.

For footwear SMEs from Member States is very important to have an instrument available for obtaining information about the environmental legislation that is applicable in other export destination countries. In this way, some problems, for instance concerning returns of exported merchandise due to noncompliance with certain limits on harmful substances would be avoided.

So, the European Union will have the first legislative data base available for the footwear industries.

This data base will be created on a requirement-structure basis and any single company will be informed about requirements applicable in the project partners’ countries and on a European scale, in a precise and simple way.

ShoeLAW Project covers 5 work packages, in which different activities will be carried out:

1. Identification of European and national legal requirements

2. Development of the environmental self-diagnosis e-platform for European footwear companies.

3. Pilot experience of the environmental self-diagnosis questionnaire with ten European footwear companies

4. Using the environmental self-diagnosis e-platform in 50 European companies.

5. Dissemination Activities