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ENVIRONMENT

Germany’s Adidas turns to recycled material ‘to combat ocean plastic’

German sportswear giant Adidas said Tuesday more than half of the polyester used in its products this year would come from recycled material, including millions of shoes made from plastic waste.

Published: 22 January 2020 08:50 CET
Germany's Adidas turns to recycled material 'to combat ocean plastic'
Adidas shoes on display at the company's factory in Bavaria. Photo: DPA

In 2020, the share of recycled polyester in Adidas products will “exceed 50 percent for the first time”, the company said in a statement.

By 2024, Adidas “is committed to using only recycled polyester” across its entire range of shoes, clothing and other items like bags and shin guards.

READ ALSO: 'Tyres made from dandelions': Germany to invest billions in 'bio-economy'

The Bavarian company also said it aimed to churn out 15 to 20 million pairs of shoes in 2020 using recycled plastic waste collected “from beaches and coastal regions”.

The group already sold more than 11 million such pairs last year — still just a fraction of the more than 400 million pairs of shoes it makes annually.

Adidas said it was committed to battling the scourge of plastic waste “to stop the pollution of the world's oceans”.

The firm's first running shoe made entirely from recycled materials, the “Futurecraft Loop”, is set to hit stores in 2021.

Since 2015, it has collaborated with environmental organization Parley for the Oceans on a range of products, including football shirts for major clubs such as Real Madrid and Bayern Munich.

READ ALSO: Adidas to bring production home with robot shoe factory

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POLITICS

Sweden Democrats threaten government crisis over biofuels obligation

The far-right Sweden Democrats are threatening to push Sweden's three-party ruling coalition into a political crisis as they fail to reach agreement over how drastically to cut the country's biofuels obligation, a key part in its plan to reduce emissions.

Published: 23 March 2023 16:19 CET
Sweden Democrats threaten government crisis over biofuels obligation

The party is claiming that a pledge in the Tidö Agreement calling for the biofuels obligation, or reduktionsplikt, to be cut to the “lowest EU level”, should mean that the amount of biofuels that must be blended into petrol and diesel and Sweden should be cut to close to zero, rather than to about half the current share, as suggested by ongoing EU negotiations. 

“We are being tough in the negotiations because of the power we have as the biggest party in this bloc,” Oscar Sjöstedt, the party’s finance spokesperson told TV4. “There is going to be a change at the end of the year that is going to be pretty significant and substantial, that I’m 99.9 percent certain about, otherwise we will have a government crisis.” 

The Liberal Party is pushing for a much less severe reduction, perhaps to a little more than half the current level, where 30.5 percent of all petrol and diesel must be biofuel. 

“We have signed up to a temporary reduction in the biofuels obligation, and it’s clear that that is what we are going to do, but zero is not an alternative for us,” the Liberal Party’s leader Johan Pehrson told TV4.

The decision to reduce the amount of biofuel in the mix at Swedish pumps has made it much more difficult for Sweden to meet its targets for emissions reductions, putting pressure on Pehrson’s colleague, Environment Minister Romina Pourmokhtari. 

Next Wednesday, Pourmokhtari will have to defend the extent to which her government’s policies have pushed Sweden away from being able to meet its 2045 target of net zero emissions when the The Swedish Climate Policy Council reports on the country’s progress towards its target. 

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