Adidas crack Fortune Magazine’s Change the World list

The German sportswear giant, Adidas, has been named in Fortune Magazine’s Change the World list.

Adidas has focused their efforts on cutting down its use of new plastic over the last few years, by using recycled ocean plastic debris as a material in certain shoes and other products which has landed them at 47 on the list.

The German company is doubling down on its sustainability push, by phasing out the use of virgin polyester over the next six years and by 2024, Adidas will only use recycled polyester in its shoes and clothing.

In a conversation with the Financial Times, Head of Global Brands for Adidas, Eric Liedtke, said that polyester accounts for half the materials used in Adidas’s products, so “we cannot make the transition overnight.”

Last year, they aimed to make a million pairs of ocean-plastic-based UltraBOOST running shoes; next year, the goal is to make 11 million recycled pairs of shoes, representing just 3% of its total shoe production.

“We have to make sure we take right-sized bites so that we can maintain our current margin structure,” Liedtke said.

“We can absorb some costs every year, but we could not absorb it all in one year.”