14 DAY TRIAL // As of recently, an Italian shoemaker and two entrepreneurs, who simply happened to be really big fans of Mother Nature, came up with a rather wacky idea: they were going to make watches using salvaged wood – normally thrown away – as their raw material. To make sure their designs appeal to the general public, both the shoemaker and the entrepreneurs took the time and used as much as seven distinct wood-types when creating just one watch. Apparently, their choices of materials also include Maple, Indian Rosewood and Blackwood.
As ecofriend.com reports, the watches are currently available worldwide and find themselves quite appreciated by those who wish to make a fashion statement and foster awareness to environmental issues in the same time.
What makes their endeavor praise-worthy is not so much the fact that they use otherwise unusable splinters to create these watches, but their decision to team up with American Forests, an organization which, as its name suggests, is in the businesses of restoring the world's forests to their former glory by planting as much trees as possible.
Thus, for every wood-watch bought, woodwatchers march straight into the wild and stick a tree roots-first in the ground. Preliminary reports indicate that, up until now, this collaboration has led to approximately 5,000 trees being planted.
Interestingly enough, professional businessmen and economists are quite surprised by the success of this project, especially given the fact that most people nowadays have decided to put watches behind them and turn to rather sophisticated gadgets – capable of doing more than simply informing you what time it is – instead.
From an environmentalist point of view, this project is more than welcomed, and we cannot but help encourage those who have the money to at least consider the possibility of purchasing such a watch.
It doesn't even matter if they are only doing it to show off to their friends and not because they are truly concerned about the natural world. In the end, it's results, and not motives, that count.