Greetings Everyone!
In my previous blogs, I touched on the massive potential and influence that sport has to raise awareness about pollution issues. In this blog, I’d like to stay on that subject, but talk more about statistics and how these movements can directly help reduce pollution.
This was the 2017/2018 jersey for the Golden State Warriors, one of the most popular NBA teams in recent years and holders of the best ever regular-season record, with an outrageous 73-9 win-loss ratio in 2015/2016. While their eye-catching team play and Steph Curry’s 3 pointers (from way downtown) dazzled basketball fans on court, the jersey itself, made by Nike, dazzled environmentalists like us off court.
Similar to the football kits in the previous blogs, it was made from a fabric blend that includes polyester derived from recycled plastic bottles.
Nike did the same thing with the US Women’s National Team for their 2015 Women’s World Cup. In fact. Nike has done that with football teams during the 2010 and 2018 World Cups as well, and continue to include recycled polyester in their production of sport wear and even sneakers.
Here’s a 2 minute video that shows the manufacturing process from bottle to jersey.
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtBLXll2FNE
Nike’s plan for the 2020 Olympics US sports teams’ kits are to make them the “most sustainable” to date. So its clear that Nike have their heads in the right direction from an environmental point of view.
Now lets talk about some figures…
With regards to the basketball and football jerseys mentioned earlier, Nike says that around 15-20 bottles are used in the making of one jersey. Nike has stepped it up a notch for the 2020 Olympics apparel by not only using recycles plastic bottles, but also using recycled nylon and rubber from the company’s factory waste.
The Nike Air Vapourmax sneaker for example, which Nike intended its 2020 Olympics athletes to wear upon receiving their medals, is made from 75% of manufacturing waste products. On top of that, Nike claims that by manufacturing with these new materials, carbon emissions are then cut by 30%.
Since 2012, Nike has been able to divert 5 billion waste plastic bottles from landfills to help with production, which although seems like a lot at first, is barely anything much when you consider the amount of plastic bottles wasted every year. Americans alone, dispose 7 times that number of plastic bottles in just one year!
What comes to my mind when I see all this information, is that all these greener manufacturing methods that companies like Nike and Adidas, while good to see, could be scaled up to become the normal method of production. The material becomes cheaper since its waste, the production methods as mentioned lead to decreased carbon emissions and of course it does help in a small way to reduce land and marine pollution. On top of that, by using these greener initiatives in manufacturing, these companies can use marketing tactics like green consumerism to market their products in such a way that consumers get a “feel good” factor when buying them.
Other clothing brands such as H&M and G-Star Raw have also started using waste material in their manufacturing and as mentioned in the previous blogs, Adidas has teamed up with Parley For the Oceans and has incorporated plastic waste into its products.
I just feel that, if all these large companies start seeing waste material like plastic, nylon and rubber as opportunities for cheaper production material, as well as a good “green” marketing strategy to increase revenue, could this not be the new norm in sport wear manufacturing?
And no, I’m not saying that this will solve totally the pollution problems on land and in our oceans, but at least on a much larger scale (think about it, all sport wear and clothing companies around the world) this could help play its part in helping to reduce pollution levels.
What are your thoughts?
Till the next blog!
Nandha
References:
http://www.container-recycling.org/index.php/issues/…/275-down-the-drain
https://hypebeast.com/2018/6/nike-2018-fifa-world-cup-sustainable-kits
https://qz.com/443745/its-now-possible-to-get-a-great-looking-outfit-made-completely-from-garbage/
https://qz.com/1032403/nike-revealed-the-new-2017-2018-nba-uniforms-each-made-with-the-equivalent-of-20-recycled-plastic-bottles/
https://news.nike.com/news/sustainability-football-kits