Presenting a sport performance shoe with the lowest ever carbon footprint…
adidas has teamed up with sustainable footwear label Allbirds to create FUTURECRAFT.FOOTPRINT – a unisex running shoe with a carbon footprint of just 2.94kg CO2e/pair, that doesn’t compromise on performance. The partnership saw the rival sportswear companies collaborate and share proprietary technologies and material innovations to reimagine a lower-emission design process.
The collaboration was first teased on social media and is the first time adidas has partnered with a footwear brand not under its own umbrella.
The just-released FUTURECRAFT.FOOTPRINT showcases a new approach to more sustainable design and an alternative method of manufacturing that drastically reduces carbon impact.
“Our partnership with Allbirds is a beacon of what can happen when competing brands from the same industry see the possibilities in coming together to design,” said Brian Grevy, Executive Board Member Global Brands at adidas. “By truly co-creating and providing each other with open access to knowledge and resources – such as Allbirds’ knowledge of carbon calculation and experience with natural materials, and adidas’ capabilities in manufacturing and performance footwear – this is a call-to-action for other brands, and a milestone in the sports industry achieving carbon neutrality.”
Embracing a lower-carbon development process, the sustainability-minded teams collaborated digitally from development to delivery, working across multiple time zones on opposite sides of the world. Together, the Allbirds and adidas counterparts across product design, material innovation, sustainability and supply chain studied every component and all aspects of the process with an analytical methodology. In under 12 months, they reimagined materials, manufacturing techniques and even packaging to reach the lowest possible footprint – whilst chasing the vision for a low-carbon shoe without compromising on performance.
“We believe that the challenge of solving climate change is the problem of our generation and solving it will not be done alone. We need to find new business models, new innovations and new ways of working together. Our partnership with adidas is an example of that,” said Tim Brown, co-founder and co-CEO at Allbirds. “Over the past year, our two teams have raced as one to create a shoe as close to zero carbon emissions as we could possibly achieve. The results are an exciting step forward, and hopefully, an example for others to follow.”
Two of the brand’s proprietary technologies are coming together and working in synergy at the heart of the innovation. Based on adidas’ popular Lightstrike midsole and tested to the same performance standards, the FUTURECRAFT.FOOTPRINT midsole compound is reimagined with Allbirds’ sugarcane-based SweetFoam®, offering a low-carbon natural component.
The unisex adidas X Allbirds FUTURECRAFT.FOOTPRINT running shoe will see an initial launch in May with a raffle of 100 pairs to adidas Creators Club members, before a fall/winter 2021 release limited to 10,000 pairs, and a wider release as part of the spring/summer 2022 collections.
