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Adidas, the Germany-based sportswear giant, is aiming to completely eliminate fresh plastic use from its premises, retail outlets, warehouses and supply centres. The global sportswear brand has recently announced that it will use only recycled plastic by 2024. According to CNN, the company pledges to eliminate the use of new plastic including polyester which is used in everything – from T-shirts to innerwears. The material is a favourite in sportswear too because of its quick dryness and light weight.
Markedly, this initiative by Adidas is expected to save around 40 tonnes of plastic every year, beginning from the current year.
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It is also being reported that the brand’ s S / S’ 19 collection will be manufactured using 4 per cent recycled polyester. Interestingly, |
Adidas is not the only major brand that is opting to reduce the usage of plastic, the Swedish home furnishing retailer Ikea has also |
announced that it will eliminate the one-time use of plastic in its stores and restaurants. Eric Liedtke, Head of Adidas’ Global Brands, elucidated on the development that, the company’ s objective was to get rid of virgin polyester overall by 2024.“ Around 50 per cent of the material used in the 920 million individual items we retail is polyester. With such high per cent of usage, it is not possible for us to make the transition in a day,” Liedtke added. Additionally apparel labels, such as Patagonia and H & M, are already using recycled polyester in some products and sustainable luxury fashion retailer Stella McCartney has pledged to stop using virgin nylon by the next couple of years. |
Little Yellow Bird, a New Zealandbased sustainable, fair trade and ethical garment sourcing company, recently rose US $ 1.2 million to develop a tech platform which will help end slavery in the garment industry. Samantha |
Jones( Founder), Little Yellow Bird, through her latest endeavour Origins, will use NEM blockchain technology to track the garment products from origin to point of sale.“ Just like I did with Little Yellow Bird, I’ m actually trying to |
solve a problem that I’ ve faced first-hand and one that impacts people and businesses across a range of industries,” boasted Jones. Origins is claimed to be the world’ s first of its kind tech platform that will trace garments.
The company has become the second New Zealand venture, whereas Jones has become the first-ever woman on the globe to have a project funded by the NEM community. It’ s pertinent to mention here that the NEM platform is a blockchain solution that assists industries to simplify the development process. According to the company, the garment sector lacks visibility and transparency which is a global issue and the customers are growingly demanding to
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have better transparency in the supply chain.“ Many apparel brands fail to track the origin of their garment manufacturing, therefore, this tech platform has a solution that will help brands solve this issue,” opined Jones( 28), who is an accomplished entrepreneur with a number of accolades, including being named as New Zealand’ s Young Innovator of the year in 2017. On the other hand, Jason Lee, Expansion Director of the company, Australia and New Zealand regions, said,“ The supply chain industry is one of the best areas to develop a real world blockchain use case and we are excited to support Origins in utilising the NEM blockchain technology which will be a great showcase globally.” |