Fashion and footwear giant Nike is leading the eco-pack.
The US activewear brand revealed it has joined forces with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to craft low-impact fabrics for use in Nike footwear and performance apparel.
The MIT's Climate CoLab is at the core of the initiative - a project of the
MIT Center for Collective Intelligence in collaboration with many other organizations such as Union of Concerned Scientists and media group Thomson Reuters.
As part of Nike's strategic focus to reduce its environmental footprint and enable business growth, Nike has already installed solar panels at its China Logistics Center in Taicang, and solar panels and wind turbines at the company’s renewable energy-powered European Logistics Campus in Belgium.
Nike said it has also increased its commitment to eco-manufacturing via renewable sources, saying it wants to reach “100-percent renewable energy in company-owned-and-operated facilities by 2025.”
An app, released two years ago, has been rereleased this week. The MAKING App, which informs users (mostly designers seeking fabrics) about the impact generic fabrics used in clothing have on the environment – including how much waste is left behind and how much water is used in the processing of garments.
“For more than a decade, we’ve worked hard to understand where our greatest impacts lie. We know materials make up about 60 percent of the environmental impact in a pair of Nike shoes,” said Hannah Jones, Chief Sustainability Officer and VP, Innovation Accelerator at Nike.
“This knowledge has focused us on the need to bring new low-impact performance materials to scale through innovative solutions.”
According to research by MIT’s Materials System Laboratory about the global impact of materials on climate change, the amount of fabric produced annually is 400 billion square meters - enough to cover to the state of California.
“Through this collaboration with Nike, the MIT Climate CoLab can help kick-start the conversation around materials by galvanizing our global community to start to tackle this immense challenge,” said Professor Thomas W. Malone, Principal Investigator and Founder of the MIT Climate CoLab project.
“The Climate CoLab is harnessing the power of collective thinking to solve some of the world’s toughest challenges and develop solutions to drive a new shared understanding that, ultimately, can enable transformative change.”