Giving Compass' Take:

• Elizabeth Segran at Fast Company writes on Adidas' plan to end plastic waste and develop its current sustainability strategy.

• How can other large fashion brands follow suit? How is your organization thinking about sustainability and eliminating plastic waste?

• Read about the state of plastic use and recycling. 


Every year, Adidas makes more than 400 million pairs of sneakers. These shoes are part of the 900 million items–including clothing and sports equipment–the 70-year-old German conglomerate puts out into the world annually. Adidas’s mission is to create high-performance products for athletes, so the vast majority of the materials it creates are made from plastic polymers, which have the remarkable ability to be transformed into everything from springy foam in sneakers to moisture-wicking fabric in sports bras.

The problem with plastic is that it does not biodegrade. Since plastic in shoes and clothes are not currently recyclable, it ends up in landfills–or worse–the ocean, where it adds to all the plastic ever created. Adidas is not the only culprit: According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 60% of all materials used by the fashion industry are made from plastic, which, in turn, comes from oil, a non-renewable resource. Adidas recognizes that it is a major contributor to the plastic pollution problem, and today, it is laying out a comprehensive plan of attack to end plastic waste in its products within the next decade. This will involve using recycled materials and designing fully recyclable products in the short term. Longer term, the company’s goal is to switch to biodegradable materials. But this is a far more difficult project–one that depends on what technologies emerge in the years to come–so Adidas is not putting a time frame on this.

“We know that plastic makes up the largest part of the materials we use,” says James Carnes, vice president of brand strategy at Adidas. “And we know that there’s no such thing as throwing plastic ‘away’; in the best case scenario, it is responsibly managed in a landfill, and in the worst case scenario it ends up on beaches in a coastal town. So we’ve come up with strategies to take responsibility for the plastic we’re introducing into the world.” The strategies include everything from redesigning its products to ensure they can be recycled easily to scaling up its use of plastic recovered from old water bottles and ocean waste.

Read the full article about Adida's plan to end plastic waste by Elizabeth Segran at Fast Company.