I am a regular runner. I participate in marathons and frequently do my research for shoes and other running gear.
But when I bought my first pair of Adidas running shoes, after a quick comparison of reviews, no one ever told me that I was buying recycled plastic.
So, I bought this pair called Adidas Men’s Ultraboost uncaged. It was pretty much higher than what my previous Asics Gel Kayano 24 pair cost me. But it looked damn good and reviews were fine.
Although some reviews did say that you have to try it before buying due to some size issues. It fit my feet comfortably and I had no qualms. But I do recommend you try them on first before buying.
It was not until last week, that I finally came to know that Adidas has been into recycling plastic big time.
I was doing my usual browsing on the internet, skimming through news about brands, reading up the latest trends, when I hit upon this headline, which said that Adidas to do about a billion dollars worth of sales of recycled shoes.
How cool is that!
Although this recycling bit would be taking a toll on its gross margins. Recycled materials would cost around 10-20% more as per a report on the same from Financial times. And 50% of their raw material is polyester.
Even if they are passing on a bit of the costs to consumers by adding to its consumer prices, this kind of rejigging of the financials would give all shareholders a scare. Investors would not like their profits wiped off the board so easily.
But still Adidas has been bold enough and has vowed to use only recycled material for all its shoes and clothing in the next 5 years or so. Kudos to these guys!
They started off in 2018 and sold well over 5 million units of shoes. In 2019, they are aiming for another 11 million of shoes made of recycled material.
Adidas sells about 920 million of individual items a year, and 11 million is still a small number relatively, but its a good start. That number amounts to 121 million plastic bottles, considering 11 bottles required per shoe.
That’s a big number!
Since early this year, I have been doing my bit to avoid using plastic bottles, and stumbling upon this news made me feel good enough to decide to put it up as a post here.
In fact, I think I am going to work on putting up more on such moves and ideas companies are adopting for sustainability. Such ideas need to be encouraged and shared.
I will leave you with a wonderful quote I use often:
If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.
George Bernard Shaw
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