Environment
Own sites
Coverage
The adidas Group operates more than 150 facilities around the world. Some are owned, many of them are leased. Since most of the production has been outsourced to external suppliers, these facilities are mainly administration and distribution sites or sales offices. Among them there are four major administration sites – Group and brand headquarters located in Germany (one) and USA (three) employing around 4,500 people.
Our production sites are located in Germany (one), Sweden (one), Finland (one), USA (four), Canada (four), China (one) and Japan (one). These facilities produce garments, athletic footwear, ice hockey sticks, helmets and blades and carry out screen-printing, embroidering and assembling of golf clubs. A full overview of the sites is given in the data section.
Environmental data has been recorded from these sites to track their overall environmental impact. Due to further production consolidation and a range of organisational changes at these sites during 2008, specific trends compared to the previous years are difficult to identify and report on.
In 2009, a revised environmental accounting framework is going to be established for all major sites and locations of the adidas Group that profiles their environmental impact and management performance in more detail. These profiles will be the basis for setting specific targets and local improvement programmes.
Global travel
As a global business, with many locations worldwide and a global supplier base, air travel is widely used by adidas Group employees. To obtain a better understanding of the environmental footprint caused by air travelling, the air travel managed through our in-house travel agency has been regularly recorded since 2006. In 2008 the total amount of business travel by adidas Group employees caused around 20,200 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide. The absolute amount of air travelling was stable, despite the growth of the business and the workforce. In relative terms therefore, the ratio of carbon dioxide emissions per employee has declined by more than 20% since 2006.
Supply Chain
Environmental Management Systems
We have limited control over the direct environmental impacts of the manufacturing process and how our suppliers act. The best way to influence the environmental impacts at our suppliers’ factories is to encourage the introduction of environmental management systems, and we have made implementing such a system mandatory for all our core suppliers. Achieving certification to a management system requires factory managers to plan, manage and review their own environmental performance.
In 2008, 20 athletic footwear suppliers were certified in accordance with the international environmental management standard ISO 14001 and the workplace health and safety management standard OHSAS 18001. These suppliers produced around 73% of the adidas Group’s global athletic footwear sourcing volume.
Sourcing volume of athletic footwear suppliers certified in accordance with ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001
Transport and logistics data
The fuel used to transport goods to markets creates carbon dioxide emissions, a major contributor to climate change. The adidas Group works each year to reduce the environmental impact of transporting its products around the world. Our policy is to minimise the impacts from transport, by working with carriers who operate sound environmental management systems and in particular minimising air freight shipments. To reduce the environmental impact of our transport operations, we typically ship most of our cargo by sea.
Compared to 2007, we saw an increase in sea freight shipment and a reduction in air freight across all major product categories as a result of further enhancements in production and logistics planning with factories.
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