By Jay Jung
As one of the most pressing threats to humanity, climate change bears increasing weight in consumer decisions. Ultimately, consumers want to know that their products are produced sustainably. In the fashion industry, one result has been numerous companies are working towards reengineering their company and products to be more eco-friendly; specifically, these efforts were shown in sports footwear produced from leading companies, Nike and Adidas. Still, within these developments remains an uncompromisable struggle between performance and sustainability and limited accessibility .
One iconic product, the one which began the sustainable footwear market, is the Nike Space Hippie. Space Hippie, released on June 11th, 2020, is a series of sustainable shoes made out of leftover materials in the Nike laboratories and production processes. According to the Space Hippie team, the project started with a single, yet thought-provoking question: what do we do with all the waste we have after making shoes? Normally, companies cut out the foams from large slabs of foams; this leaves a lot of excessive foam that ends up in the trash bins. With the vision of achieving net carbon zero and net zero waste in Nike’s production, the team embarked on a journey creating shoes out of dead shoes or leftover aspects of shoes. By mixing, grinding, and heat-pressing various materials including leftover foam, knit, fabric, yarn, and polyurethane materials, the Nike Space Hippie’s upper is entirely made out of recycled flyknit and approximately ten percent of the midsole consists of recycled material. With its innovative idea, a catchy slogan, “This shoe is trash”, and the distinct, futuristic design, the product sold out in various Nike flagship stores in a matter of seconds. Not only was it profitable to Nike, but also this project suggested a potential method for future shoe production for many other brands, allowing for a more sustainable future.
Another example would be the partnership between Parley for Oceans and Adidas. Unlike the Nike Space Hippies that were released to only a series, Parley is a technology and concept, implemented on various types of shoes. (Parley technology has been used on professional racing shoes to casual Sunday morning slippers.) Inspired by the devastating pollution and littering on beaches and in oceans harming marine life, Parley for Oceans collaborated with Adidas and created a special thread of fabric derived from processing PET(Polyurethane Terephthalate). Although PET is the most commonly used material for plastic bottles and other plastic items as it is clear, strong, and lightweight, the devastating environmental damage after their use encourages humanity to search alternatives like Adidas’s innovation with Parley. With this technology, Adidas fused them to create uppers for their shoes. The first time they sold it to the public, they had only seven thousand pairs, equal to eleven plastic bottles, in stock as the process of manufacturing these PET threads was extremely pricey (retail at two-hundred twenty dollars) and complicated. However, as years passed by and technology advanced, Adidas was able to mass produce the shoes just as any other sneaker from their brand. While it was technically impressive to make flexible, malleable material out of plastic bottles floating around the ocean, the significant aspect of this technology the shoes were most significant as they represented a change in mindset. The executive director of Parley and Adidas collaboration, Eric Liedtke, mentions that this approach was not only for the product and its sales, but also to “spread awareness” about an environmental challenge. This message instantly became viral on internet and social media platforms and soon became an iconic model marking an era of shoes not only accommodating the users’ need but the environment in which the users live. The initiative and goal of this project is what makes Parley and Adidas collaboration meaningful to the lives of people.
As sustainability becomes an important factor for both the consumers and the producers, it is naturally logical for companies to provide a large number of these products as an effort to familiarize the public with the future of their brand. However in this transition phase, there is a recurring question: is it okay to compromise performance for sustainability? For example, one of many sustainable shoes from Nike, Pegasus Turbo Next Nature was criticized for having an uncomfortable and heavy midsole which was made out of leftover recycled materials from other production processes. A similar incident happened to Nike’s flagship marathon shoe, Nike Alphafly Next Nature. When the midsole of the Next Natures and previous, normal midsole was measured by a durometer to check their compression capacity, the Next Natures had a significantly lower compression. Additionally, the chunks of foam inside the midsole made the durometer uneven for some parts of the shoe. Although consumers are interested in performance enhancement, they also want to contribute positively to supporting their planet. Being naturally interested in more sales and profit, massive sportswear companies desire attention through these campaigns and projects; one of the strategies they use it that they intentionally make the outsole shoes thicker and larger, ultimately to increase the percentage of recycled materials in the shoe while not having to spend cost on producing advanced, recycled knit for the uppers. However, balancing profit and purpose is also a challenge to overcome in achieving carbon net zero and promoting sustainability in the footwear industry. Still, the continuous work and trials that have been made and will be made hints at the possible coexistence of performance and sustainability.
As such, it is certainly a dilemma for companies to choose between capturing customers now, or prepare, although challenging with current restraints in technology, for the future and maintain their image as globally-leading, eco-friendly companies. Furthermore, given the often hefty price tags of such products, they are largely inaccessible to general consumers and not viable as broad solutions to plastic waste. Still, the paradigm shift to environmentally-conscious clothing companies and the development of eco-friendly tech is not insignificant. Current approaches and attempts to a more sustainable future are making good progress, although it is important that these efforts are exercised by various companies and groups to ensure a planet for humanity to thrive on.
