Adidas Group

Additional Comments

The use of colours and dyes has an environmental impact which we can reduce by choosing certain dyes and colours that are less environmentally harmful and also by reducing the number of colours and dyes.

Having larger batches of materials to dye significantly reduces the environmental impact because fewer changes from one colour to another reduce lost lead-time and wastage. In addition, larger machines can be used which are usually more efficient than smaller ones.

Our plans in this area have been informed by a thesis with the title ‘The Environmental Benefits and Process Impact of Consolidation of Fabrics in Apparel’, which identified the potential benefits in terms of chemicals, water and energy savings. This thesis also helped us in identifying improvement processes in the development area.

Creating guidelines for designers

The best way to encourage behaviour change is to address people in ways that make sense to them in their daily life. One project managed by our Design department in 2011 was the Design for Environment Guidelines project, which aimed to develop environmental guidelines that designers would find engaging and inspiring to use.

The project team extracted relevant parts of the V1 Apparel Index of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition and combined these with environmental aspects, the product life cycle and design considerations to create visually-led guidelines that resonate with designers.