As part of NIKE, Inc.’s goal to reduce its environmental footprint and enable business growth, the company announced two efforts today aimed at furthering that commitment: a collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) **Climate CoLab **to bring innovation in materials to the forefront of the climate conversation, and a commitment to reach 100 percent renewable energy in company-owned-and-operated facilities by 2025.
“For more than a decade, we’ve worked hard to understand where our greatest impacts lie. We know materials make up about 60 percent of the environmental impact in a pair of Nike shoes,” said Hannah Jones, Chief Sustainability Officer and VP of Innovation Accelerator at NIKE. “This knowledge has focused us on the need to bring new low-impact performance materials to scale through innovative solutions.”
According to research by MIT’s Materials System Laboratory about the global impact of materials on climate change, the global apparel industry is expected to produce more than 400 billion square meters of fabric per year — representing nearly enough material to cover the state of California — and is estimated to consume nearly 1 billion kWh (kilowatt hour) of electricity every year. According to the research, creating and processing materials are significant contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions.
“Through this collaboration with Nike, the MIT Climate CoLab can help kick-start the conversation around materials by galvanizing our global community to start to tackle this immense challenge,” said Professor Thomas W. Malone, Principal Investigator and Founder of the MIT Climate CoLab project. “The Climate CoLab is harnessing the power of collective thinking to solve some of the world’s toughest challenges and develop solutions to drive a new shared understanding that, ultimately, can enable transformative change.”
The MIT Climate CoLab Materials Challenge, opening for submissions today, seeks revolutionary new ideas for how to engage industries, designers and consumers in valuing, demanding and adopting low-impact fabrics and textiles.
Once materials are created and sourced, they go into the hands of designers, which is why Nike created the MAKING App, a predictive app that helps designers and product creators make better decisions about their materials choices. Nike recently updated the app to highlight the climate-related impact of materials choices alongside chemistry, waste and water. NIKE's partnership with the Climate CoLab builds on its ongoing research into materials innovation as part of LAUNCH — the strategic collaboration with NASA, the US Department of State and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) — dedicated to developing sustainable materials solutions.
“We believe in treating sustainability as an innovation opportunity that can deliver new scalable, sustainable solutions that will accelerate us into a low carbon economy,” Jones said. “Our goal is to help catalyze and unleash innovators, investors, companies and civil society to solve one of the world’s largest innovation opportunities together.”
To target the environmental impacts that extend beyond materials, Nike today also announced its commitment to reach 100 percent renewable energy in company-owned or operated facilities by 2025; the company has joined RE100, a global campaign led by The Climate Group in partnership with CDP, designed to engage, support and showcase influential businesses making similar commitments.
“Climate change is a global issue that requires global solutions,” said Eric Sprunk, Chief Operating Officer at NIKE. “As part of our business strategy, we are pursuing the use of renewable energy, driving energy efficiency and innovating in sustainable materials for athletes and for the future of sport.”
Nike has already implemented on-site renewable energy generation at some of its largest facilities, including solar panels at the China Logistics Center in Taicang, and solar panels and wind turbines at the company’s renewable energy-powered European Logistics Campus in Belgium.
Beyond its own operations, for more than a decade Nike has worked with its contract factories to help them implement programs to understand their energy use and climate impacts, increase their energy efficiency and reduce their carbon emissions. Recognizing the importance of a consistent, clean energy supply, Nike continues to proactively support contract factories’ use of clean energy solutions and has invested in efforts to identify future local clean energy supply opportunities for contract factories.
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Published Sep 25, 2015 2pm EDT / 11am PDT / 7pm BST / 8pm CEST