4 Considered Design and the Environment
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4 Considered Design and the Environment
Key Targets by FY11:
In our FY04 report we shared our thinking and our company-wide drive toward incorporating environmental sustainability into our business practices and our product design. We said that based on our footprint across our entire supply chain we saw a number of key focus areas for Nike: 1 Reduce waste generated across our entire supply chain. 2 Reduce our CO2 emissions. 3 Use chemistry and design innovation to eliminate toxins and waste. 4 Design ourselves into an ultimate, aspirational goal of creating closed-loop products and business models (products that can be reused or recycled). Nike creates approximately 50,000 product styles each year. Although our business strategy includes producing fewer product styles, our volume and sales are projected to grow. That level of production traditionally creates a great deal of waste and requires a considerable amount of chemistry throughout the life cycle of products – from design through manufacturing and shipping to the consumer and on to the landfill or second-hand market. We see three choices: 1 Continue with business as usual, ignoring the impact. 2 Address waste and impact of chemistry where we see them occur. 3 Influence the beginning of the process. The first is not an option. The second will only produce incremental improvements. The final choice is where we see real potential for impact and system change. Gathering and reporting data in this area helps us understand better the impacts of our business. It helps us understand the links between our core processes and end products and the steps between that deliver opportunity for real innovation in eliminating waste, changing the chemicals used in products and, in some cases, challenging notions of the need for chemicals at all. Sometimes the results are easy to come by, as we found in creating a use for scrap footwear material in Nike Grind which has...