Adidas Group

Additional Comments

Managing the Environmental Strategy 2015 across our brands and functions is a complex process. The Strategy covers the entire adidas Group and value chain. In 2011, we developed a format for guidelines and tools to ensure that the Strategy is comprehensive, coherent and that the targets complement and strengthen each other. This will be further refined and implemented to support all functions and brands in their environmental strategy work.

Valuable input for the structure of the guidelines was delivered by two university theses: one dealing with ‘Innovative tools for Corporate Environmental Strategies’, and one on ‘Environmental management accounting (EMA): a Means of Ensuring Business Integration of Environmental Strategies’.

Key performance indicators

In order to follow up on all targets and to measure the achievements over time, key performance indicators (KPIs) were introduced in 2011 for several business processes, such as Development, Sourcing and Green Company. We will look to develop further KPIs for other business processes in 2012.

Group-wide index development

This year saw the development and piloting of version 1 (V1) of a Sustainable Apparel Index. The V1 Apparel Index is an initiative of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), an industry-wide group of leading apparel and footwear brands, retailers, manufacturers, non-governmental organisations, academic experts and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Index is built around three different levels: brand, product and manufacturing facility level. As a member of the SAC we participated in the pilot of the V1 Index that took place from September 2011 to January 2012 with a project team of around 15 employees and several product teams from adidas, Reebok, TaylorMade and Rockport. The pilot results confirm the complexity of the undertaking and also highlight the challenge in developing a robust assessment methodology across the entire apparel supply chain.

In 2012, we will launch a project to understand which elements of the SAC V1 Index can be applied within the adidas Group and its brands with the aim of developing a Group-level Index Guideline.