By Lori Zimmer, Source: Ecouterre

With inspiration from Sports Illustrated’s famous free sneaker phone that was offered with every subscription, designer Sean Miles of O2 Recycle has made a series of designer shoe phones, from recycled materials. Using older model Nokia and LG handsets, the designer upcycles them into working communication art. The quirky handsets take on an air of elitism when users are asked to speak into the iconic red sole of a recycled Christian Louboutin heel.

Meant to be fun like our beloved Walkie Talkies of childhood, the shoe-communicators are both silly and stylish.  Old Louboutins heels, men’s brogues and wingtips and even rain boots are given the hook up- transforming their soles into functional, wearable phones.

The project comes from O2 Recycle’s quest to solve the world’s new problem of disused mobile device disposal. As phone users constantly upgrade to the next mode, thousands and thousands of perfectly workable phones simply get thrown away. Recognizing the superficial stigma of being seen with an old phone, O2 Recycle wanted to come up with a fun way to give the phones a new life, while drawing awareness to the problem of trashing working phones for a better model.

And awareness is one thing these shoe phones will garner- as raising a shoe to your face is a sure fire way to gain some attention! Next on the list of wearable phones are phone handbags (since we often scramble to find our phones in the bottomless pits of our purses) and a glove phone.

O2 Recycle compensates customers who send in their old phones for recycling, and inspire people to associate creativity with recycling.