~ Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility ~
Plastic pollution in the world’s oceans is a serious problem that we all face at this current time. This problem of plastic pollution is not localised to a specific ocean or body of water, rather it is “globally distributed across all oceans due to its properties of buoyancy and durability” [Eriksen, 2014]. The widespread nature of this pollution is only overshadowed by the enormous mass of plastic that is currently floating in the oceans and polluting the seas. [Eriksen, 2014] further estimates “a minimum of 5.25 trillion particles weighing 268,940 tons” of just floating plastic debris. These figures come from the averages obtained from 24 studies conducted by Eriksen and his co-authors across all five sub-tropical gyres, the largest main currents that plastic pollution would get pushed along. The plastic that is currently polluting the oceans is incredibly varied and ranges from “milk jugs and abandoned fishing gear to polymer molecules small enough to penetrate human skin” [Moore, 2014]. This variance in plastic products makes it difficult to collect and recycle some of this waste as the type of plastic and process used is hard to pinpoint due to the sheer amount of different plastic products that plague the ocean. According to a study, it is estimated that 8 million metric tons of plastic is dumped into the oceans every year [World Economic Forum, 2016], an alarmingly high number that could be subject to rise. As the amount of plastic produced goes up so will the “cumulative quantity of plastic waste available to enter the ocean from land” which “is predicted to increase by an order of magnitude by 2025” [Jambeck, 2015]. This direct relationship is dangerous as plastic production is ever increasing which inherently means that the level of plastic pollution in the ocean will too.
Figure 1 - Adidas Parley - Shoes made using recycled ocean plastic https://www.adidas.co.uk/ocean_plastic
“Huge numbers of us are now waking up to the plastic pandemic and deciding that if governments and global agencies can’t move fast enough, then we are going to have to do something ourselves.” [Siegle, 2018]. This statement rings true as more designers and global brands in particular have committed to combatting this “plastic pandemic” in any ways they can, be it donating to causes, inventing solutions to help clean up plastic pollution or sourcing recycled ocean plastics. Adidas specifically are creating a collaboration with parley to create shoes and clothing as seen in figure 1. This collaboration aims to replace the virgin plastics adidas use in shoe and clothing manufacture with Parley Ocean Plastic. This plastic is created from recycled and upcycled plastic waste from the ocean, coastline, remote islands and beaches. Currently 40% of adidas apparel uses Parley Ocean Plastic with certain pieces of clothing like Adidas Parley training wear manufactured with at least 75% upcycled plastic. With aims to replace all of there virgin plastics used in their apparel with upcycled plastic by 2024, Adidas are proving themselves to be a global grand who create with sustainability as one of their top priorities.
Bibliography:
· Adidas. 2020. Parley Ocean Plastic. [online] Available at: https://www.adidas.co.uk/sustainability-parley-ocean-plastic [Accessed 14 March 2020].
· Adidas. 2020. Parley. [online] Available at: https://www.adidas.co.uk/parley [Accessed 14 March 2020]
· Eriksen M, Lebreton LCM, Carson HS, Thiel M, Moore CJ, Borerro JC, et al. (2014) ‘Plastic Pollution in the World's Oceans: More than 5 Trillion Plastic Pieces Weighing over 250,000 Tons Afloat at Sea’. PLoS ONE, 9 (12)
· Jambeck J.R., Geyer R., Wilcox C., Siegler T. R., Perryman M., Andrady A., et al (2015) ‘Plastic Waste Inputs from Land into the Ocean’. Science, Vol. 347, Issue 6223, pp. 768-771
· Moore, C., 2014. Plastic Ocean: How a Sea Captain's Chance Discovery Launched a Determined Quest to Save the Oceans. New York: Avery.
· Siegle, L., 2018. Turning the Tide on Plastic: How Humanity (And You) Can Make Our Globe Clean Again. Trapeze.
· World Economic Forum, (2016) The New Plastics Economy, Rethinking the Future of Plastics, [Accessed 18/03/20] Available from-http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_New_Plastics_Economy.pdf
Image List:
· Figure 1, Adidas. (2019) Adidas Parley ultra-boost trainers. [Online Image] Available from-https://www.adidas.co.uk/ocean_plastic
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