According to The Robin Report, approximately 70 % of customers under 35 want brands to behave more responsibly to our planet. This is one of the reasons we’ve prepared a series of articles explaining some of the biggest brand’s plans for the future.
First off – adidas. Adidas takes this topic very seriously. The brand’s goals for the future include making sneakers purely from sustainable materials. This might seem like a long shot, but keep reading to find out how adidas is on the road to become the most sustainable brand in the footwear industry.
adidas x Parley for the Oceans
In just one year, over 8 000 000 tons of plastic end up in the oceans, and this number only keeps rising. Parley for the Oceans is a project that, with the help of fundraisers and charities, wants to do something about this. Since 2017, they have also collaborated with adidas and organized events such as Run For Oceans, which had hundreds of thousands of participants from the whole world.
adidas also works with Parley on sneakers. Over ten plastic bottles are used in the production of every pair from their collaboration, which is a much better place for plastic to end up than the ocean. adidas aims to produce 15 million pairs of shoes in this way every year.
Polyester? Not necessary.
This year, adidas is focusing on the PRIMEBLUE and PRIMEGREEN technologies. PRIMEBLUE, containing Parley Ocean Plastic®, can be found for example in the latest Ultraboost 20’s. The even more sustainable PRIMEGREEN will be focused on more in the second half of the year – PRIMEGREEN is a material composed entirely without virgin plastic.
Furthermore, all the polyester used in the production of PRIMEBLUE and PRIMEGREEN technology is recycled – thanks to this, adidas is on the right track to achieve their goal for the end of 2020 – 50 % of all polyester produced by them will be recycled afterwards.
We´re not just focused on changing how we do business; we´re dedicated to changing how our industry does business.
James Carnes, adidas VP Brand Strategy
Done with your sneakers? Great!
Another interesting novelty is the voucher system, designed to prompt customers to return their worn-out sneakers back into circulation. For now, this system is only active in Great Britain. The idea is that a customer can get up to $25 for returning their old sneakers. Afterwards, adidas either recycles them or sells them again.
adidas and space
Apart from keeping the oceans clean, adidas is also focused on outer space, which explains their recent partnership with the International Space Station (ISS). The goal of this collaboration is, understandably, bringing more innovation into adidas’s technologies. The first results can be seen on the adidas UltraBOOST 20 silhouette.
Future prospects
The path to 100% sustainable sneakers is a long one, but so far, adidas has been completing all their announced goals. In the next thirty years, we can look forward to a whole bunch of technological innovations. We can only guess if everything goes according to plan. But we can promise one thing – this isn’t the last article that you’re reading about adidas and sustainability.
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