The Nag

I walk. A LOT. I just recently started "greening" myself, but walking was a big part of my life even before that. Sounds like a contradiction, but I am just too lazy to take the bus or get a car. I like that time to myself anyway. The pitfall: I am SO hard on shoes. Not "Eh, my shoes wear out after a while" sort of hard, but "OMG THERE'S A @#$%ING HOLE IN THE BOTTOM OF MY SHOE!!!!" kind of hard (yeah, that happened to me this summer). I work in daycare, so I am on my feet almost all day, and when I am not, I am a student who walks to school. Work in walking to and from work, to do little errands, social activities, etc etc...and you have one very busy pair of shoes.
My first pair this year only lasted four months, and then I had to rush and get a new pair because there was a quarter-sized hole in my sole. The pair I bought after that are just starting to wear out...the heel is separating from the sole. That's a lot of shoe waste in under a year.

Basically, I need really good, hard-wearing, long-lasting, durable beasts of shoes. But I want them to be as green as possible. 

The catch? Every pair of eco-shoes I have found either don't look up to the task or they are WAAAAY out of my student budget. And with our good ol' Canadian winter fast approaching, I am going to need good footwear pretty soon. 
Other catch? Being in teacher's college, I need "professional" looking shoes. 

So, basically, all I really want is a non-sneaker shoe that can stand up to my abuse plus the abuse from the horrible winter weather conditions that will last longer than 6 months.  

And somewhere to put my old sneakers that isn't a landfill.

*le sigh*