Our feet carry 100 per cent of our body weight when we stand. Thus, armouring them with the right footwear is a delicate and important task to do. The everyday visuals of a child running barefoot on a road on a hot, sultry afternoon, while another one just wanders around with a pair of worn-out slippers, and a few babies slipping into big shoes as they start to walk come prancing through our minds when we think about slippers. For Class 12 student Arhan Reddy, these small moments snowballed into the idea for EcoSteps, an initiative that turns discarded Ethylene Vinyl Acetate (EVA) waste into slippers for underprivileged children.
The idea for EcoSteps clicked for Arhan during a conversation with Irshad Ahmed Mecca of Farida Group, who spoke about the excess EVA waste generated at their footwear factory in Ambur and the possibilities of repurposing it.
Arhan’s first step was to visit the factory and understand how the materials were processed. “In September 2025, I went there and understood the process of slipper making,” he shares. He watched the waste being pulverised, turned into pellets, and prepared for production.
However, the idea found its social purpose only later. Before his second visit to the factory, Arhan was walking around Chennai with his friends. He recalls, “I got a quick glimpse of children walking barefoot on the road and understood that they were not in a good condition,” he says. So the EcoSteps initiative was completed with the aim of “recycling EVA and making slippers that can be donated to underprivileged children to help them with their daily life.”
Irshad’s son Armaan Mecca, who manufactures the products says, “It takes a lot of hard work and vision from Arhan to connect the dots and take it further.”
Cementing the goal
What followed was nearly a year-long process of factory visits, testing, and sampling. Arhan learnt, in detail, about slipper making, while also working with the team at Farida Group to increase the recycled EVA composition from 19% to 27%.
Yet, turning waste into wearable footwear came with its own challenges. The composition of the raw materials had to be carefully balanced to ensure that the slipper remained comfortable and practical while also being affordable enough to produce at scale. “The composition of the compound itself is like a recipe you make. Anything you increase or decrease has an impact on the hardness, on the comfort, or even the overall cost,” explains Armaan.
Arhan also visited two or three orphanages in Chennai, collecting foot-size data from around 750 children to determine the size of the footwear. He interviewed nearly 100 children on what they would want their slippers to look like. Some even drew their own designs.
Now that the gathered data has resulted in 2,000 pairs of slippers, Arhan plans to distribute 200 pairs every week to different orphanages in and around Chennai.
The initiative was formally inaugurated by Minister for Revenue and Disaster Management, KA Sengottaiyan, who was presented with one of the first pairs of slippers. The interaction also opened up possibilities for EcoSteps to expand beyond disadvantaged children. “The minister said that there are 10 lakh impoverished people to whom we can supply slippers,” says Arhan, who hopes to grow the initiative with support from the government and his school’s NGO partner in Kannagi Nagar.
