Adidas is retooling its sustainability policy through the launch of the “Sport needs a space” strategy, the new catchphrase that was revealed in its recent 2015 Sustainability Progress Report. “Sport needs a space” is the result of extensive consumer research the company has undertaken to gauge how important sport is for the values and well-being of society.
A striking 93 percent of the people interviewed for this study said they would hate or dislike a world without places in which to participate in sport. Sport needs a space to play in but these spaces are increasingly endangered because of threats such as climate change, resource depletion or overpopulation, said Adidas.
The strategy, rooted in Adidas' underlying belief in the power of sport to change lives, translates the group's sustainable efforts into tangible goals and measurable objectives to 2020. Expanding the previous sustainability scope, “Sport needs a space” is a holistic strategy framework that follows the entire lifecycle of sport, covering the spaces where sport products are made, sold and used, whether indoor or outdoor.
Adidas has broken down the strategy into the two main areas of Product and People, and has further identified the six priorities to tackle the challenges that endanger the spaces for sport. In the Product area, the strategy focuses on water, materials and energy. In the People area, the focus is on empowerment, health and inspiring action.
The 2015 Adidas Group Sustainability Progress Report is the 16th published by the company. The report provides an annual overview of accomplishments and challenges, and closes a cycle that started back in 2010. At the end of this cycle, the company is sourcing 43 percent of all its cotton as Better Cotton, and says it is well on track to source 100 percent of cotton across all product categories in all its brands from “sustainable cotton.” Since 2010 employee volunteering hours have reached a total of 150,000. The SMS Worker Hotline, launched at the end of 2012, has been expanded to a total of 58 factories across Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia, covering around 263,000 factory workers. In addition, the Adidas Group now has 13 sites globally with ISO 14001 certification, while initially aiming for five. In the 2010-2015 period, the company has also started partnerships with Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC), bluesign technologies and Parley for the Oceans.
Meanwhile, Puma has announced a new program with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, to financially help Puma's suppliers in emerging markets. It is the first program by a European brand with IFC that will offer financial incentives for suppliers to improve sustainability and safety standards. IFC will adopt a financing structure with tiered pricing of short-term working capital, offering lower costs to the suppliers that achieve a high score in Puma's supplier rating system. This rating system is based on the Puma's monitoring, through an auditing process, of suppliers' adherence to its social and environmental standards. The new joint program therefore rewards a supplier's rating within Puma's environmental and sustainability program through related fees.
The program will be initially rolled out in China, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Vietnam. Ball Planet, a small and medium enterprise with manufacturing facilities in China, is the first supplier to join the program. Ball Planet has been a business partner of Puma since 2010.
IFC is the largest global development institution focusing on the private sector in emerging markets. The organization provides financing to garment and footwear suppliers through its Global Trade Supplier Finance (GTSF) program, which offers working capital for suppliers backed by receivables from international buyers. The GTSF program, established in 2010, is a US$500 million multicurrency investment and advisory initiative that provides short-term finance to emerging-market suppliers and small and mid-sized exporters.
Puma and IFC have launched the new financing program for suppliers in partnership with GT Nexus, a cloud-based business network and execution platform for global trade and supply chain management. The platform enables network participants to operate against a real-time set of information across multiple supply chain functions, allowing all network participants to optimize the flow of goods, funds and trade information, from order to payment.
