Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Adidas' Green Teams

Adidas utilizes employee Green Teams as part of their sustainability effort. Theses teams promote environmental initiatives and help motivate other employees.

Adidas' 2010 Sustainability Report, Performance Counts, the company outlines some of the projects spearheaded by global Green Teams:

  • In Portland, one-way cups and dishes were a big problem. Now there are reusable mugs for sale at all coffee shops at this location and no one-way dishes available in the kitchens around
  • the buildings. This reduces the amount of waste significantly.
  • The Mattapoisett green Team has started a great recycling and reuse programme with plastic and glass recycling as well as recycling empty toner cartridges and buying re-manufactured ones.
  • In our office in Bangkok, Thailand, where many employees regularly visit factories, the Green Team introduced a carpooling scheme to reduce the number of trips made by car to each particular factory.
  • Our French colleagues in Landersheim have successfully had solar panels installed to heat the water used in all showers and in the staff restaurant.
  • In our Istanbul office, the green Team managed to reduce water consumption by 14%, compared to 2009. They also saved energy by only using those appliances which were really needed.
  • In Amsterdam, the green Team worked mainly on the tough task of changing people’s habits. They organised special awareness-raising events such as the ‘Tour de Commute’ month which coincided with the Tour de france and was aimed at getting people to take the bike to work instead of their cars. Altogether, they rode 5,334 km in that month.
  • These and other locations participated in earth day celebrations on April 22 to raise awareness of and to engage people for a clean environment. The green Teams came up with great ideas to support the spirit of the day. At our headquarters in Germany they organised a paper road and a rubbish mountain to show how much waste we produce. Additionally, old mobile phones were collected and sold to a company which specializes in refurbishing them. The proceeds from this went to a charity.

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