Adidas has presented a new five-year environmental strategy, designed to change the company's approach to environmental management by working on improving all the points of the entire value chain. The new plan was published along with the company's 2010 Sustainability Report.
One aspect of the plan is a commitment to using 100 percent Better Cotton by the year 2018. “Better Cotton” refers to cotton grown with a minimum of pesticides and water. The shorter-term goal is to be using 40 percent Better Cotton by 2015. Adidas has founded the Better Cotton Initiative, hoping to the cotton industry as a whole by reducing the use of water and pesticides.
The environmental strategy over all takes into account all stage of the value chain: product design, development, sourcing, logistics, IT systems. It extends existing programs to make each of these stages more efficient, which in turn will allow Adidas to offer more sustainable products and lessen its environmental footprint.
The “Green Company” aspect of the strategy focuses on Adidas' own sites, following up on last year's creation of a shared environmental management system for the group's headquarters in Germany and five sites in the U.S. Certified to ISO 14001, the locations meet international standards that allow them to manage their environmental approach day-to-day. The certification also means the headquarters can manage and set targets for sites globally.
The full Sustainability Report, Adidas' 11th since 2000, is available online at www.adidas-group.com/en/SER2010/.
