Adidas reveals promising achievements on recycled polyester scheme

With the 2023 Earth Day in mind, Adidas announced its accomplishment of currently using 96 percent recycled polyester for its products. The ambition to replace all virgin polyester with recycled polyester ideally by 2024 was set in 2017 and seems now to be possible to achieve earlier than expected.

Adidas has been aiming to lessen its reliance on virgin polyester ever since the first pair of their high-performance shoes were created in 2015 using recycled materials.

In 2021, a goal of 90 percent recycled polyester was reached. Had this volume been virgin polyester, a total of 390,000 metric tons of CO2e would have been emitted, equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions produced by 50,000 US households' worth of electricity.

In this context, Adidas released a short Film, which features athlete Jazmin Sawyers and highlights the brand’s progress and further ambitions.

Viviane Gut, senior director of sustainability at adidas, said in the press release: “In 2017, Adidas made a commitment to replace virgin polyester with recycled wherever possible by 2024, and we know that it is important that we continue to share our progress and deliver against that commitment. But while we are proud, this is a step, not a solution. There is still much more that we want, and need, to achieve so we can become a bigger part of the solution than the problem. We are as motivated as ever to keep innovating and collaborating to create new possibilities.”

Moreover, future plans will expand beyond recycled polyester, using three main focus areas: “changing materials by testing and scaling new raw materials, rethinking entire processes to design products that have a circular end-of-life solution, and reducing its carbon footprint”.

More information about its schemes can be found on the brand’s website.