Nikeisn't anyone's idea of a scrappy company. But one style of its athletic shoes[shoes?:shoes paper pattern cutter] is—literally. The Trash Talk is made from scraps of leather and synthetic materials that are stitched together and attached to a recycled rubber sole. The shoe is constructed well enough for NBA play, yet with sufficient style and eco-cred to win Best in Show in this year's International Design Excellence Awards.
Kasey Jarvis, 33, a designer in Nike's product-development Innovation Kitchen, began working on a junk shoe after seeing heaps of discarded materials in a waste-management center at a Nike factory near Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Ten years ago, Nike could have made an entire shoe from the materials left over from manufacturing each pair of shoes. The materials weren't generally used, though, and ended up in landfills or incinerators.
Since then, Nike has halved its waste output and recycles two-thirds of its scrap, says spokeswoman Kate Meyers. But top management wanted to do better. Under a 2008 effort dubbed Considered Design, the sports apparel[apparel?:apparel paper cutter machine] and equipment company aims to reduce waste throughout its supply chain by 17% and increase use of environmentally preferred materials by 20% by 2020.
By turning the scrap into uniform pieces, factories also could employ computer stitching rather than labor- and cost-intensive hand stitching. That made large-scale production of the Trash Talk feasible in China.
Yet Nike's executive leaders did not immediately embrace the Trash Talk. Months of discussions passed before Harlow, Nike's design director for running footwear[footwear?:Footwear paper pattern cutter], approached Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns. An environmental advocate, Nash debuted the sneaker, in red and gold, at the 2008 National Basketball Assn. All-Star game. The company sold out its first run of thousands of pairs of Trash Talks at $100 a pair within hours.
KIDS GET IT
The 2009 version came in two other color combos: white and orange and black and blue. The next edition is in the pipeline. "Kids understood and appreciated the story," Jarvis says, adding that people often underestimate kids' grasp on sustainability. The trick was not proclaiming that there is a big environmental problem that Nike wants to solve, but showing that eco-friendly shoes can be fun. "It was a refreshing way to look at sustainable shoes."
