Of course to highlight the problem at hand the brand decided to do what it knows best; make a pair of trainers.
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The Germany-based sports shoes and clothing manufacturer Adidas tries to raise awareness on the dizzying levels of pollution oceans now face in a unique fashion- by designing a concept shoe entirely made from ocean plastic debris and illegal gillnets. Parley’s partner organisation Sea Shepherd retrieved the nets after a 110-day expedition tracking an illegal poaching vessel, which culminated off the coast of West Africa.
“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”. It is an illustrative representation for a series for consumer-usable products from ocean plastics that Adidas and Parley for the ocean will be unveiling this year. For the moment, Adidas declared that the plastic waste shoes are simply meant to pinpoint the concept of sustainable manufacturing.
Turning ocean junk into useful shoes is just one part of a collaboration with environmental organization Parley for the Oceans (which the brand is a founding member of), as a way to bring attention to the worsening state of our largest earthly wonders.
Still in the prototype stage, a spokeswoman for adidas told The Huffington Post, “This is not a plan, this is an action”.
“We do this to show you what we can do when we unite all our forces”, he said.
Just last week, an event that was hosted by the United Nations revealed the project via Adidas’ Eric Liedtke and Parley for the Oceans’ Cyrill Gutsch. In April, when it announced its partnership with Parley for the Oceans, Adidas also announced that no Adidas retail store will use plastic bags.
Awareness is growing as to the extent to which we have polluted the oceans of the world, but there is a lot of work to be done.
Therefore, he asserts that ending plastic pollution in the oceans is a matter of “reinvent[ing] the material” and creating something different from it that will not pose the dangers to marine life that the current material does.
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The focus of Adidas shifted in this case from mass producing and marketing to showcasing a technique that is at least partly sustainable: collecting plastic waste from the oceans and reusing it for creating sport shoes while hindering the creation of new waste. Plastic doesn’t belong in nature, it doesn’t belong in the belly of a fish, it doesn’t belong out there.
