Challenge: Being environmentally responsible
Climate change has been a topic in the news and on the agendas of governments all around the world in 2007. There were numerous conferences and events that addressed the need for significant, urgent action.
What does this mean for a business such as the adidas Group? Environmental sustainability poses a number of challenges for our company and its functions, whether for product management, innovation, development teams, facility management or our manufacturing partners.
The goal is to achieve a balance between various demands:
- Our products must be competitive in function and price, but also safe (during use and after disposal) as well as environmentally friendly.
- Apply best practices at own sites and operations to continuously reduce our direct environmental footprint.
- Manufacturing products must be done with the least environmental impact without compromising function and quality.
- Our operations have to become resource-efficient and lean but also need to fully support our business goals.
Response: Reducing our environmental footprint
Reducing pollution with so-called end-of-pipe solutions offers only limited environmental benefits, so we strive to design out environmental problems by rigorously applying the following principles:
- Compliance with all legal local laws and regulations
- Product materials and components to be non-toxic and safe
- Promote environmental management systems and best practices in the supply chain, where major environmental impacts occur
- Integrate environmental aspects in the product design and development process.
We apply new policies, procedures and practices to ensure that all corporate entities of the adidas Group are operating to the highest standard. Our core suppliers are required to establish environmental management systems, which encourage them to plan, manage and review their own environmental performance. We capture and report on resource consumption at our own factories and major sites in a harmonised way, and have introduced similar environmental metrics for our suppliers' footwear factories. These initiatives allow us to identify and share best practice across the whole Group - both at our own sites and in our supply chain.
We have further strengthened our capacity building programmes for suppliers and conducted energy efficiency workshops in major sourcing countries. In 2007, innovative environmentally-optimised product ranges were developed by the adidas Sport Style division and launched in spring 2008.
For more see Protecting the environment.
- Energy workshop, China
- We have further strengthened our capacity building programmes for suppliers and conducted energy efficiency workshops in major sourcing countries.