Lite Foot Company
Inner Tubing to Sustainable Art
By: Chelsea Proffitt
Katie Rodgers-Hubbard was on a summer inner tubing trip with her friends, taking in the beauty of the surrounding area. “What could go wrong with a fun friend's trip,” they thought, but the next thing they knew all the tubes popped and they were swimming instead of floating. All they had left were broken bits of rubber that they could have easily discarded into the landfill. Instead, Katie decided to keep the material and turn it into fanny packs for her friends to remember their failed trip. Katie has not always been an upcycler or designer; it all started when she opened her store Lite Foot Company.
She was born and raised in the cornfields of Illinois with her parents and two sisters. After getting married, she moved around because of her husband's military position. They went from Indiana to Oklahoma to Germany and eventually came to Savannah. She lives here with her husband and dog, Neville.
After coming to Savannah she opened Lite Foot Company, a sustainable home goods store with vendors’ upcycled work. “We help people walk lighter on the earth,” Katie said when asked about the store. Seeing the vendors' products inspired her but she had no experience. Her first summer in Savannah was slow and she was looking for something to keep her occupied in the store. She found herself on YouTube learning to create upcycled designs. This is when she realized she could create something with the inner tubes. Katie said, “By the end, I was like this is fun. I really enjoy challenging myself to figure out things that are broken and going to the landfill, let's figure out something I can do with it.” She enjoys the challenge of taking broken things and giving them a new purpose. Katie believes we live in a society of overconsumption with a lot of waste and no way to handle it. We need to do everything we can to reduce waste. “Any effort to produce less and waste less is really important.”
Every artist has a process. It mostly consists of having an idea, gathering materials, and producing. Katie said, “I do the opposite. I get a material and I say what would this material be good at.” Her process works in reverse. She gets her materials and then comes up with an idea. She works around the materials she has access to. Sometimes she sits on material for a while before she can come up with an idea, but she has to trust that an idea will eventually present itself.
Throughout the time of opening Lite Foot Company and learning more about sustainable art and sustainability in general her passion for the subject has grown stronger. She recently started a non-profit called Lite Foot Foundation where they have started initiatives to create a better planet and plan to do more in the future. One of these is to reduce the use of plastic water bottles by allowing stores to sell aluminum bottles instead, then they will collect, sanitize, refill, and redistribute the bottles. Another is a machine that will shred plastics and turn them into new products for the community. The idea behind this is to show real products that have been recycled to the community, to give faith and hope to people that their recycled materials go into something.
In a world full of hardships and despair Katie said she continues doing what she does because she believes in it. “ I’m a hopeless optimist, I really do believe that changes each individual makes will make a difference.” Katie is proof of this. Just through Lite Foot Company, 25,000 fewer plastic bottles have been used due to her refillable bottles. Her actions have made a huge difference in the Savannah area.
