Adidas will make 50 new shoes using plastic found in ocean trash. The German sports shoe and apparel giant's new running shoe is named Adidas x Parley and is made from plastic gathered from the Maldives in the Indian Ocean. The trainers also contain plastic from deep-sea fishing nets used to illegally catch fish by their gills.
Adidas' sea conservation business partners first delivered the plastic and gillnets to the shoe company. Special robots then started spinning the ocean trash into yarn fibers.
After the yarn has been added to spools, more robots start to stitch the material to make the shoes' uppers. Each upper has plastic equal to about 16 plastic bottles and 13 grams of gillnet plastic.
The soles are not made from recycled products but instead include foam pellet material to support runners' feet.
Adidas built an earlier prototype that was wholly made of ocean garbage . However, an Adidas designer told Wired the shoe was not comfortable enough as a running shoe.
The Adidas x Parley shoes are named after the Parley ocean conservation group. Its green shoes will not be sold in retail stores but instead will be given away to winners of its Instagram contest. All 50 pairs of sneakers are set to ship by the end of July.
The high-tech shoes will also function as a model for Adidas' new product line of athletic shoes, according to PC Magazine. They will be sold to the general public starting this fall.
Cyrill Gutsch is founder of Parley for the Oceans. He shared in a statement that Adidas and Parley are using new materials and tech as a game-changer for the sporting goods industry.
Gutsch stated that they have taken the first step. Recycled marine plastic known as Parley Ocean Plastic can be used to replace new plastic in the production of sports shoes and clothing.
In related news, Nike is giving Chuck Taylors a reboot since purchasing Converse in 2003. The footwear and apparel company recently rolled out its All Star Modern collection.
The new collection includes a limited-edition shoe called All Star Modern HTM, referring to three top Nike designers: Hiroshi Fujiwara, Tinker Hatfield, and Mark Parker, according to Wired.