As part of Nike Inc.’s strategic focus to reduce its environmental footprint and enable business growth, the company said Friday it was committing to reach 100 percent renewable energy in company-owned and -operated facilities by 2025, and is also collaborating with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Climate CoLab to help bring innovation in materials to the industry.
“For more than a decade, we’ve worked hard to understand where our greatest impacts lie,” said Hannah Jones, chief sustainability officer and vice president of the Innovation Accelerator at Nike. “We know materials make up about 60 percent of the environmental impact in a pair of Nike shoes. This knowledge has focused us on the need to bring new low-impact performance materials to scale through innovative solutions.”
Related Articles
Research by MIT’s Materials System Laboratory on the global impact of materials on climate change shows that the global apparel industry is expected to produce more than 400 billion square meters of fabric annually and is estimated to consume nearly one billion kilowatt-hours of electricity every year. According to the research, creating and processing materials are significant contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions, Nike said.
You May Also Like
Jones said Nike, which had $30.6 billion in sales last year, has a three-pronged strategy aimed at “how we radically reduce our carbon footprint.”
“The bulk of reducing our carbon footprint is in the materials we use — 60 percent,” she said at Nike’s SoHo showroom. “The first is to innovate a whole new palette of sustainable materials. The second is to look at how we support our supply chain into energy efficiency and into renewables. The third is to look at all the owned or operated facilities that we have and to commit into getting them into energy efficiency and into LEED [certification] status, and then beyond that to getting them into this renewable energy pledge.”
Jones called Nike’s pledge “ambitious…but on its own not nearly enough.”
That’s one reason Nike has joined with MIT to not just enhance its own efforts toward greater innovation and advancement in materials usage, but to be able to share those developments with the industry.
The MIT Climate CoLab Materials Challenge, which opened for submissions on Friday, seeks revolutionary ideas for how to engage industries, designers and consumers in valuing, demanding and adopting low-impact fabrics and textiles.
“We want to help drive what we hope will be a revolution in the world of textiles,” Jones said. “MIT research shows that in polyester alone, the amount used in the industry is equivalent to 185 coal plants per year. The apparel industry has a carbon footprint and the industry has to start working together to invest more in innovation, push our materials vendors and make them understand there’s a market for sustainable materials and come up with solutions that are competitive and pre-competitive.”
Once materials are created and sourced, they go into the hands of designers, which is why Nike created the Making App, a predictive app that helps designers and product creators make better decisions about their material choices. This week, Nike updated the app, which is available free on iTunes, to highlight the climate-related impact of materials choices alongside chemistry, waste and water.
The Making App is powered by Nike’s Materials Sustainability Index, which was used as the basis for the Sustainable Apparel Coalition’s Higg Index and offers a full life-cycle analysis of the carbon footprint of all conceivable products used in apparel manufacturing.
Showing that leather, which is important to Nike’s footwear offering, has among the worse carbon footprint ratings, Jones said Nike has been working on “if we use leather, how do we make sure we’re reducing waste. Also, alternatives that won’t compromise on performance or aesthetic.”
One example that is growing is more Nike’s Flyknit shoes are now being made using recycled polyester yarn.
In apparel, Nike is moving more into using cotton from the Better Cotton Initiative that employs sustainable production methods and labor rights standards. In polyester, Nike is moving toward using more recycled polyester and overall investigating new bio-based materials.
Jones said in choosing what fabric and fiber to use, Nike is using the approach of “how to we create products that can be reused and recycled and reborn.”
“What I love is that sustainability is becoming a competitive advantage, not just in terms of how the product performs, but also that it just makes great business sense. We believe in treating sustainability as an innovation opportunity that can deliver scalable, sustainable solutions that will accelerate us into a low-carbon economy. Our goal is to help catalyze and unleash innovators, investors, companies and civil society to solve one of the world’s largest innovation opportunities together.”
This week, Nike also joined RE100, a campaign led by The Climate Group in partnership with CDP, designed to engage, support and showcase influential businesses making similar commitments.
As for its 100 percent renewable energy pledge, Nike noted that it has already implemented on-site renewable energy generation at some of its largest facilities, including solar panels at the China Logistics Center in Taicang, and solar panels and wind turbines at the company’s renewable energy-powered European Logistics Campus in Belgium.
Even when it comes to where Nike chooses to manufacture, including a pledge made in May to create an advanced footwear manufacturing center in the U.S. that will create 10,000 jobs over the next decade, sustainability comes into play, Jones noted.
“We definitely look at that aspect in the business model and for me it’s about being close to market and what does that mean in closing the loop and creating recycling opportunities,” she added.