As fast fashion takes its toll on the environment, the hottest new trend is for sustainable clothing and footwear. Recycling and thrifting have become buzz words in the apparel industry, and Converse Japan have thought up an inventive way to put an eco-friendly spin on their footwear.

Not just tackling unsustainable fashion, they’re also taking aim at food waste, using some unusual materials to make dyes for their latest line of pastel high-top sneakers called 'All Star Food Textile Hi'.

They have collaborated with a food waste reduction project based in Japan called Food Textile. They use discarded food such as vegetable scraps purchased from farms and the food industry, and then give them a new lease of life as textile dyes.

The soles of the new environmentally friendly Converse are made of recycled rubber, and each one of the three shoe colours have been named after the waste material that was used to make the dyes.

The 'Drip Coffee', which has been sourced from cafes, would normally just be thrown away, but Converse and Food Textile have worked together to re-purpose the used coffee into dye for these brown sneakers.

The 'Blue Mallow' models have been coloured with a type of herbal tea.

The springtime bloomer which has become the representative flower of Japan, Converse and Food Textile have also found a way to recycle cherry blossoms. The Sakura sneakers are coloured pink with real cherry blossom petals that have fallen naturally. Not content with just promoting recycling, Converse have also pledged to use some of the profits from these shoes to plant sakura trees in areas of Japan that were struck by the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011.

These eco-friendly shoes will be sold from August onwards on the Food Textile online shop for 9000 yen.