ENVIRONMENT

Products have environmental impacts at all stages of their life cycle. By looking carefully at each stage of the cycle, we can establish what those impacts are and what we can do about them.

Our most significant impacts result from the use of energy, water, materials and chemicals when the products are being manufactured. We help our suppliers find ways to reduce the impact of the production process. We also recognise that we have the opportunity to innovate and create better products at the design and development stages.

Marketing

Marketing is about creating innovative concepts and determining how to make our products successful in the marketplace. When we are creating products for our consumers we have the opportunity to demonstrate our environmental credentials. We have introduced special ranges of more sustainable products, which have been made with recycled materials and with the lowest possible environmental impact.

Design

Our designers aim to design a product to meet our customers' needs, both in terms of how the product performs and how it looks. The decisions our designers make can significantly affect the environmental impact of later stages in the process. For example, the simpler and more standardised we can make our patterns, the less waste and fewer emissions there will be in the production stage.

Find out more

Development

Our developers liaise with our manufacturing partners to ensure the product is made to our standards. They produce detailed technical specifications and consider issues such as the environmental impacts associated with different materials.

We assess the environmental impact of materials we use. This includes looking at the resources used to grow the crops for our materials and we aim to choose those that use the fewest resources. We encourage the use of recycled materials.

See a footwear developer's view
See Sustainable clothing for urban cyclists

Sourcing & manufacturing

Most of our environmental impacts occur in the manufacturing phase. And almost all our manufacturing is done by independent suppliers, not by us. The use of resources such as energy contributes to climate change and the process can create waste.

We help our suppliers to reduce the impacts associated with different production processes - for example for footwear and apparel. Our suppliers know that we measure and track their environmental work and that their progress is important for our business relationship with them.

See Greening the supply chain

Own operations

Our nearly 40,000 employees are based at one of our 170+ subsidiaries around the world. These include offices, a small number of our own factories and warehouses. At these facilities we use energy, water and other resources such as paper, and we create waste.

We have set ourselves targets - for example to reduce our relative energy use by 20% by 2015 - and we have established Green Teams of employees to help mobilise everyone to do their bit.

See Own sites

Transport

The fuel used to transport goods to market creates carbon dioxide emissions, a major contributor to climate change. To reduce the environmental impact of transporting goods, we typically ship most of our cargo by sea. Only in emergencies, or in times of high market demand, for example during global sporting events, do we choose to air freight our products.

We aim to limit the amount of goods we air freight through monitoring our production planning.

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Use and end-of-life

When products that have come to the end of their useful life are disposed of, they contribute to society's growing waste problem. How used products are disposed of depends on local conditions and regulations. We are reducing waste by building in more recyclable parts into our shoes. We are pushing ourselves to do more on this topic and on all environmental issues in our Strategy 2015.

Read about our environmental strategy for 2015