As the World Cup gets set to start I’m most impressed by Nike’s work behind the scenes rather by the now famous 3 minute commercial that went viral before it was even public and has been seen over 12 million times in less than a month.
American’s alone consume approximately 200 billion gallons of water. On top of that, each year more than 10 billion plastic water bottles end up as garbage in landfills. As the US and World population increases, the demands on our water resources continue to increase. This puts a strain on our environment but there is a way to make a difference and Nike is working on it. For the first time, all of Nike’s national teams, including Brazil, England, United States, Portugal and The Netherlands, will be wearing jerseys made entirely from recycled polyester.
Nike’s bottles-to-T-shirts operation is fairly straightforward. Bottles were collected from Taiwanese and Japanese landfills; a Taiwanese supplier cuts up, melts, and spins plastic bottles into a yarn for the shirts. Each shirt consists of 100% recycled polyester and approximately eight plastic bottles. The shirts are slightly more expensive to produce than standard jerseys, but Nike claims that the costs ultimately even out because less material is needed for production.
Environmentally savvy soccer lovers will also have the chance to check out Nike’s shirts, the brand is using 13 million plastic bottles to produce jerseys for fans. All in all, Nike’s initiative will stop 254,000 kg of polyester waste from being dumped in landfills. This amount would be enough to cover more than 29 football pitches. If the recycled bottles used to make the jerseys were laid end-to-end they would cover more than 3,000 kilometers, which is more than the entire coastline of South Africa. For Nike, using the recycled plastic isn’t just a nice gesture to the environment; It takes 30 percent less energy to produce these eco-friendly shirts than with traditional materials.
After all, I guess the famous video is right in more ways than one, Nike is writing the future, a Sustainable and social responsible future that is.
Lawrence Roman's Blog 