Adidas recycled shoe image via Adidas
With so much plastic waste dumped in the world’s oceans each year, sports clothing company Adidas has teamed up with an environmental awareness organisation to take that waste and turn it into a new Adidas shoe range.
The organisation that has teamed up with Adidas, called Parley for the Oceans, had announced its pairing with the sports giant at the United Nations headquarters in New York as part of a presentation highlighting the ocean waste issue.
Recent reports suggest that nations and organisations are fighting a losing battle when it comes to clearing much of the millions of tonnes of plastic found in our oceans and have not done enough to stem the tide.
With this in mind, the organisation announced its partnership with Adidas at the conference and spoke of the design of a shoe upper made entirely of yarns and filaments reclaimed and recycled from ocean waste and illegal deep-sea gillnets.
The plastic used for the prototype shoe was obtained by a partner organisation of Parley – Sea Shepherd – after a 110-day expedition tracking an illegal poaching vessel, which culminated off the coast of west Africa.
Rather than just being a concept, however, Adidas has said that it intends to release the shoe, along with other ocean plastic products to be revealed later this year.
“At Parley for the Oceans, we want to establish the oceans as a fundamental part of the debate around climate change. Our objective is to boost public awareness and to inspire new collaborations that can contribute to protect and preserve the oceans.” said Cyrill Gutsch, founder of Parley. “We are extremely proud that Adidas is joining us in this mission and is putting its creative force behind this partnership to show that it is possible to turn ocean plastic into something cool”.
