Nike Goes Environmental
March 8th, 2005Nike launches Cradle-to-Cradle-inspired shoes
Nike has just launched its new Considered family of shoes, designed from a Cradle-to-Cradle-ish Point of View.
To create the Considered line, Nike’s designers went back to first prinicples, questioning basic design traditions in order to get to a new and better product outcome which addresses the environmental footprint required to source, manufacture, and recycle shoes. Here are some highlights:
- Leather (a renewable resource) pieces are stiched in an overlapping fashion so as to produce smooth internal seams, obviating the need for comfort liners and reducing the shoes’s material mass.
- All of those leather pieces are tanned using a vegetable-based process
- Again, to save material mass, metal eyelets aren’t used
- The two-piece outsole is designed to snap together, eliminating harmful adhesives and simplifying recyclability
- No use of PVC
- Where possible, materials are sourced locally to reduce transportation energy use
The result? Considered shoes generate 63% less waste in manufacturing than a typical Nike design. The use of solvents has been cut by 80%. And a stunning 37% less energy is required to create a pair of shoes.
Popularity: 2% [?]
March 10th, 2005 at 8:08 pm
The Nike website is really nice – and it’s great to see a large company taking a stance on sustainability. At the same time, the shoes make up such a small percentage of Nike’s goods, it’s easy to see it as greenwashing the whole company. I hope this line forms a prototype brand to which the rest of their products can look for environmental design. Now for socially consicous design… vegetable dyes, sure, but dyed by WHOM and for what wage?