Reebok

How sustainable is Reebok?

This scree­ning has been done by Fai­ri­fy on March 22^nd 2020

Ree­bok is an Ame­ri­can fit­ness brand and is part of Adi­das Group, the ove­rar­ching com­pa­ny of Adi­das, Ree­bok and Tay­lor­made. With the pro­duc­tion of 448 mil­lion pairs of shoes in 2019, Adi­das Group ranks lar­gest sports manu­fac­tu­rer in Europe, and second lar­gest in the world. Gene­ral­ly, the com­pa­ny has a good repu­ta­tion in terms of cor­po­rate res­pon­si­bi­li­ty. It par­ti­ci­pates in a large num­ber of pro­jects and com­mit­tees to fur­ther improve its sus­tai­na­bi­li­ty and has alrea­dy rea­ched signi­fi­cant milestones.

Moving for­ward

As a foun­ding mem­ber of the Bet­ter Cot­ton Ini­tia­tive, Adi­das has been using 100% more sus­tai­nable cot­ton since 2018. For a com­pa­ny that pro­duces the amount that Adi­das does, this is a huge achie­ve­ment that signi­fi­cant­ly reduces car­bon emis­sions, and use of che­mi­cals and water. This is the result of a sus­tai­na­bi­li­ty stra­te­gy that the Ger­man giant has been true to for years, and for which it now reaps the fruits because a big chunk of other sports­wear com­pa­nies are only just get­ting star­ted with more sus­tai­nable mate­rials. Adi­das keeps paving the way for sports­wear com­pa­nies and their mate­rial use. Cur­rent­ly, it’s using a large amount of recy­cled poly­es­ter and aims to replace all vir­gin poly­es­ter. The lea­ther it uses is cer­ti­fied by the Lea­ther Wor­king Group. The brand is also increa­sing the sus­tai­na­bi­li­ty of its mate­rials by tea­ming up with Par­ley for the Oceans to upcycle plas­tic lit­ter to yarn for its X Par­ley products.

Too many ques­tion marks

While Adi­das gets a lot of things right in terms of mate­rial usage, it has a signi­fi­cant amount of other things to improve upon. There is signi­fi­cant room for impro­ve­ment in terms of trans­pa­ren­cy. The com­pa­ny uses cer­ti­fied lea­ther, but does not spe­ci­fy the usage of cer­ti­fied down or wool, which are consi­de­rable steps to take towards ensu­ring bet­ter ani­mal wel­fare. In terms of wor­kers’ rights, we know that the Ger­man-born brand is a mem­ber of the Fair Labor Asso­cia­tion, but we have no evi­dence that it makes an effort for pay­ment of a living wage in its sup­ply chain. Adi­das men­tions using rene­wable ener­gy in its own faci­li­ties in Ger­ma­ny, but doesn’t dis­close forei­gn faci­li­ties. The same holds up for its sup­ply chain, which it has ful­ly map­ped and publi­shed, without ela­bo­ra­ting on emis­sions. There are more examples to be found in the repor­ting, which is sim­ply not trans­pa­rent and seems a bit like cher­ry picked sta­tis­tics and data disclosure.

Not fair enough

Things are loo­king good in terms of cli­mate action though. Adi­das has signed the UN Fashion Indus­try Char­ter for Cli­mate Action, which is a com­mit­ment to an emis­sions reduc­tion of 30% and the step­ping stone towards car­bon neu­tra­li­ty in 2050. The com­pa­ny is also taking consi­de­rable steps towards reduc­tion of water usage, gene­ra­ted waste and packa­ging. The brand with the ico­nic three-stri­ped logo varia­tions shows great lea­der­ship and owner­ship of its res­pon­si­bi­li­ty to pro­duce in a fair man­ner, but is sim­ply not there yet. Espe­cial­ly when we com­pare it to youn­ger brands that are sus­tai­na­bly built from the ground up, Adi­das has a long way to go.

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