Is it wrong to wear leather shoes?

Unless you are David Hasselhoff, foregoing leather trousers and jackets shouldn't be too much of a drag, but I admit it's trickier when you get to shoes. Though touted as a completely natural material, the production of conventional leather leaves an almighty ecological footprint. Processing largely involves using volatile organic solvents, fungicides, azo dyes (possibly carcinogenic), huge amounts of groundwater pumped from precious wells in developing countries, and chromium (VI) - the substance that particularly riled Erin Brockovich.

These highly polluting production systems are virtually obsolete in Europe and America, but that hardly matters now that the bulk of the world's $60bn leather industry has been transferred to developing countries, particularly Asia: more than 2bn people with leather in China alone. For many consumers, it's a case of out of sight, out of mind.

But not for vegans many of whom refuse to buy leather, which has traditionally left them with plastic, and more specifically polyurethane (PU). Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) insists that PU leaves less of an environmental burden than leather, but Greenpeace disagrees, pointing out its petrochemical origins and the fact that its creation results in dioxins.

At first this seems to leave you between a rock and a hard place, or barefoot. Fortunately, there are now a few newer brands trying to make shoes more sustainable. For someone like me, who still associates flat shoes with PE lessons, they are also mercifully glamorous.

Had Judy Garland embraced veganism instead of drink and drugs, she'd surely have patronised the Dorothy-inspired heels from www.beyondskin.co.uk. These are the work of a confirmed vegan, Natalie Dean, who mitigates the placcy-shoe problem by using a lot of fabric. Satins are polyester-based rather than viscose, avoiding extra use of acid chemicals, and there's a new line (handmade in the UK) using vintage fabrics. Similarly 'trans-seasonal' and therefore more sustainable is the vegan-friendly range from Bourgois Boheme (www.bboheme.com) who mix biodegradable elements with polyurethane.

For children's shoes, Galahad Clark, a scion of the Clark shoe family, is on a mission to create the 'most innovative and sustainable designer shoe brand in the world'. His Terra Plana (www.terraplana.com) range has made great inroads. Shoes are based on a stitched construction, which rules out polluting solvents, and while many designs are leather, it's chrome-free or vegetable-tanned. Soles are 90 per cent sustainable rubber and even heels are fashioned from sustainable wood. But Terra Plana is perhaps best known for the Worn Again trainer range, constructed from all manner of unlikely recycled fabrics, including hemp fused with prison blankets, all stitched into one distinctly contemporary construction (look out for a new style, The Bigger Shoe, designed in honour of the 15th birthday of The Big Issue magazine). One small step for recycling perhaps, but one giant leap for your wardrobe.