19 Apr Adidas Launches New Sustainability Strategy
The Adidas Group launched a new sustainability strategy Thursday that seeks to tie the concept to the availability of sports under the tagline “Sport needs a space.”
Deeply rooted in the company’s core belief that sport has the power to change lives, the Strategy translates the Group’s sustainable efforts into tangible goals and measurable objectives until 2020. All actions taken based on the strategy have a direct positive impact on the world of sport, in order to ensure that sport remains an infinite source of happiness, the German company said.
‘Sport needs a space’ is the result of extensive consumer research the company has done to validate its understanding of how important sport is for well-being, values and working together as well as for our overall society,” said Adidas Group CEO Herbert Hainer. “The most striking learning is that 93 percent of people interviewed said they would hate or dislike a world without places to participate in sport. As reported, “It would be an unbearable world with little enjoyment; a miserable place with lack of energy.
“At the same time, sport needs a space like a field to play on, an ocean to surf or a mountain to climb,” Hainer continued. “These spaces are increasingly endangered because of human-made threats such as resource depletion, climate change or overpopulation. This is why we want to take action and be the guardians of these spaces with sustainable work that addresses these challenges.”
‘Sport needs a space’ is a holistic strategy framework that follows the entire lifecycle of sport, from the spaces where sport is made (all places where products are created, designed, manufactured and shipped), sold (own retail, wholesale and e-commerce) and played (from the indoor court to the outdoor pitch all over the world).
Adidas presented the new strategy with the publication of the 2015 Adidas Group Sustainability Progress Report, the 16th published by the company so far. The report is an annual overview of achievements and challenges and it closes a process which started back in 2010.
Some highlights from the 2010-2015 cycle include:
- The SMS Worker Hotline, launched at the end of 2012, was expanded to a total of 58 factories across Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam, covering roughly 263,000 factory workers.
- Better Cotton has increasingly been sourced, with the company now sourcing 43 percent of all its cotton as Better Cotton. The company is well on track to source 100 percent of cotton across all product categories in all its brands as ‘sustainable cotton’.
- The increasing use of virtual samples allowed the Group to save 2.4 million samples between 2011 and 2015.