ENVIRONMENT

Transport

When evaluating the carbon emissions associated with sourcing our products we need to look at how goods are transported from where they are made to where they are sold.

We plan to ship products by ocean freight. Only when the product is needed faster than planned, for example during sporting events, we consider other modes of transport such as air freight - and then only on a case-by-case basis.

The company is aiming to reduce its carbon emissions so the first step for our Transport and Logistics department was to gain a clearer picture of the carbon emissions associated with the different ways we transport our products. Historically we have had to rely on estimates because real data has not been available for some parts of a product's journey. It made sense therefore to set up a pilot project with one of our logistics service providers to see if we could fill the gaps in our data.

The clearer picture

The pilot study set out to calculate and compare the CO2 emissions for air and ocean freight services for one adidas product, the adidas Superstar II, when transported from the factory where it is produced near Dongguan, China to an adidas store in Nuremberg, Germany.

The project team collected all the relevant transportation data from the pick-up at the factory right through to the final product delivery. We were able to calculate both the overall carbon emissions as well as identifying which steps in the journey contributed the most carbon emissions.

The results

Shipping the pair of Superstars by air freight results in nearly 14 times the carbon emissions of sending them by ocean freight. By air, the emissions were 5.4 kg CO2 and by sea only 0.36 kg CO2. To put this figure in context, a single person's CO2 emissions for a flight from London to New York are about 900 kg.

Next steps

The results from the pilot help us in our ongoing efforts to optimise product routing and distribution channels.