Nike’s moonshot ambition is to double its business while halving the company’s environmental impact. The company has set a vision for a low-carbon, closed-loop future as part of the company’s growth strategy. Nike has placed three strategic aims to guide this work: minimize environmental footprint, transform manufacturing and unleash human potential.
“At Nike, we believe it is not enough to adapt to what the future may bring – we’re creating the future we want to see through sustainable innovation,” said NIKE, Inc. President and CEO, Mark Parker. “Today our teams are advancing ambitious new business models and partnerships that can scale unprecedented change across our business and the industry.”
Minimize Environmental Footprint
Nike aims to minimize its environmental footprint throughout the product life-cycle, looking at carbon and energy, chemistry, water and waste to identify strategies to use less, use better, innovate new solutions and, where possible, close the loop and reuse. More specifically, Nike is targeting a 10% reduction in the average environmental footprint of its shoes by 2020, paired with a goal to increase use of more sustainable materials overall.
Transform Manufacturing
Nike’s sustainability vision does not only involve what products Nike makes but also how it makes them, by focusing on improving the manufacturing process. Nike’s manufacturing vision involves working with fewer, better contract factories that are committed to transforming their businesses beyond a foundation of compliance to be lean, green, equitable and empowering for workers. Nike is also investing in pilot research programs aimed at uncovering how services, technology and changes to compensation and benefits systems can positively impact workers inside and outside their workplaces.
Unleash Human Potential
Guided by the belief that diversity fosters creativity and accelerates innovation, Nike is strengthening its recruitment, promotion and retention of diverse talent by expanding representation of women and people of color to start, while continuing to increase diversity of all dimensions across its business long term.
Along with their commitments to the workforce, Nike is also looking for ways to serve the next generation of athletes by raising awareness of the physical inactivity epidemic and working with others to get kids moving, because research shows that active kids are happier, healthier and more successful.
Undoubtedly, these strategic efforts will deliver on Nike’s long-term strategy to leverage sustainable innovation as a powerful engine for growth and catalyst for change, serving as a bright example for an entire industry shift towards a more sustainable future.