The view from above
In part three of our six-part Green Leaders series, we explore how Nike and Adidas are using holistic thinking to reduce their environmental impact
In part two of our series, we examined how Ikea and Ørsted were seeking out more sustainable materials and resources to supply their businesses and keep up with evolving consumer trends toward shopping eco-friendly.
Now, we’ll focus on how the food and beverage industry can expand that sustainable approach into an overall holistic way of doing business with a little inspiration from Nike and Adidas – two companies looking to more than shoes to guide their overall decisions.
Nike’s keeping score
With the eventual goal of becoming zero waste, Nike is combatting waste in its production line by designing it out of their products beginning at conception and right into development. By utilising a circular economy, Nike plans for every material to remain in use or be recycled. To achieve that goal, Nike has created a reference tool for its teams to use across the design process.
The Materials Sustainability Index (MSI) takes into account each product’s use of energy, water, chemicals, and the amount of waste generated in the process, and provides a score out of 100. That score is applied to similar indexes used in Nike’s footwear and apparel lines to generate an overall global environmental impact profile and score which the creative teams can then refer to throughout the production cycle. Providing a tangible score has allowed Nike to focus on delivering its products with the least amount of waste, along with a means to document progress and strive for continued improvements in its production process.
Adidas looks to its core
Adidas, meanwhile, uses a two-pronged strategy to enact its sustainability efforts: They’ve adopted an organisational goal by signing on to the United Nation’s Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action and pledging to reduce not only theirs but their suppliers’ carbon emissions 30% by 2030. And to further promote that goal, Adidas has developed a holistic strategy around its true inspiration – sport.
Adidas’ love of sport and belief that it can change people’s lives led it to create a Sustainability Strategy around the lifecycle of sport. Their approach identifies the spaces where sport is made, sold and played and confronts threats to those spaces from man-made causes – for example, combatting human rights violations in factories, conserving materials in packaging and collaborating with athletes to act as role models. By purposing itself around all aspects of sport, Adidas creates a culture of responsibility across its entire supply chain – ensuring they will meet their sustainability goals and that sport and its future players can continue to thrive.
Seeing the whole
Consumer trends toward shopping more sustainable products have undoubtedly influenced the apparel industry in how they produce their products. But what Nike and Adidas have done is to apply sustainable practices not just toward individual products but toward their overall business, thereby embedding sustainability in each company’s ethos.
Nike has created a tangible scale for managing its materials used for every product it conceives, cutting down on the need to source raw materials through reuse and waste reduction. Comparable methods allow for the food and beverage industry to factor waste into their work process from the beginning – providing a better analysis of potential environmental impacts of new products before they go to market.
Adidas has looked to the root of its business to develop its sustainability strategy. By centring its efforts around sport and the spaces it’s made, sold and played, Adidas has given its workforce a clear focus – opening the door for new innovations like their quest to create a fully circular product. Their FUTURECRAFT.LOOP aims to be the first running shoe made from recycled plastic and designed to be recycled again and again.
Both approaches offer valuable guidance for factoring sustainability into the supply chain at conception and how what guides you internally can focus external goals. Moreover, holistic thinking has allowed each to stand apart from its competitors.
Holistic thinking with SIG
Want to know how SIG integrates holistic thinking? Our Way Beyond Good initiative aims to incorporate sustainability into all we do – from the way we run our company to how we source our raw materials and make responsible products – it's our roadmap into becoming a net positive business.
In the fourth part of our series, we’ll further our exploration of Green Leaders in business and learn how Cisco and Ben & Jerry’s use partnerships and collaboration to push green initiatives and community projects on a global scale. We’ll also look into how the food and beverage industry can apply similar methods.
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- octobre 14, 2020