Addidas And Parley, A Partnership Towards Sustainability

 

Sustainability in Supply Chain, an yet another buzzword that shouldn’t be missed out by logistics and supply chain aspirants, so what it is and why many firms seek it opens up today’s reading on “sustaining the Sustainability” Sustainable supply chain management is the way of incorporating the supply chain aspects of the firm with the paramount environmental aspects of the earth. It begins right from sourcing the raw materials to delivering the finished goods to the consumers.

But why would a firm want to do that? Is it not a complex process to disrupt the current supply chain?  In return what is the gain the firm is going to see? Well, let’s seek the answers through the sustainable story of Addidas and Parley.

Global production of 448 million pairs of shoes in the year 2019, yes the Addidas group of footwear produces more than 400 million of footwear/ per year since 2018 and these 400+ million pairs of shoes consume tones and tones of polyesters, which serves to be the core raw material in Addidas shoe making business. The crucial part for Addidas here is the procurement of the virgin polyesters which is near to difficult to match up the rising demand, just not in the aspect of quantity but also in the aspect of potential contamination it may cause. Especially when we talk about virgin polyester contamination it is undoubtedly we are talking about the ocean plastic pollution.

Comprehensively, understanding the challenge Addidas took a smart move to procure the core raw material from the place where it is thrown as a waste.  In 2015, Addidas partnered with Parley to begin their Drain and Gain process. It starts with draining the plastic wastes (bottles especially) from the oceans which undergoes the basic cleaning and sorting. Later, these plastic materials reach the gates of Addidas factory where they are get segregated into usable and non usable ones.

Usable ones are converted into recycled polyester thin threads whose characteristics is similar to the virgin ones. And these threads are used for shoe making, Jersey making etc. whereas, the non usable ones go back to the recycling unit.  Replacing all the virgin polyester with the recycled ones by 2024 is the Adidas‘s next mission.

This massive move of Addidas gained several advantages like

• Environmental and social responsibility
• Better sustainability in the supply chain
• Conservation of resources
• Prevention of more virgin polyesters usage
• Financial savings as virgin polyester are costlier than the recycled ones
• Setting up an hallmark of green supply chain in sport wear industry
• Above all making their consumers to feel the pride

It is just not Addidas and Parley many firms have already begun or planning to begin to incorporate the environmental care within their supply chain. And what we saw is just a raw success story of Addidas and Parley who has set huge hallmark in the sports wear industry.  Currently Addidas is running a parallel implementation, where one side with recycled polyester (It takes comparatively higher time which also include the recycling time) and another side with the virgin ones to keep with the demand.

Hence next time when you’re purchasing Addidas sportswear or when you are checking out your favorite sports personality on field do not forget to checkout their well tweaked sustainable apparels too. #Happy_learning 6

                                                                                                                             - Roobaswathiny A