by
By: Hunter Thomas
Nike is one of, if not the biggest clothing and shoe company in the entire world. With that being said, the way they make their clothes carries a big weight on the environment because of the massive amount of product they have to move and produce each year.
To promote sustainability within Nike, they have started numerous campaigns with goals to reduce their carbon footprint, with their most recent campaign being called “Move to Zero”. As a part of this campaign, Nike has a set of goals that they hope to reach by 2025, and if they meet those goals, they believe that they will greatly contribute to reducing carbon emissions. These goals include reducing greenhouse gasses by 0.5 tons, increased use of environmentally conscious materials, 80% of waste recycled back into products, and a 25% reduction of fresh water usage.
Nike has a history of promoting sustainability, and have rapidly increased that promotion over the past five years. Over the past year, they have been pushing their Nike “Forward” collection, which is a hoodie that uses 75% less carbon emissions than their regular knit sweater.
Over the past week, Nike has made multiple social media posts promoting their new “Move to Zero” campaign. The way they are trying to make people take action on this campaign is to recycle their shoes through a challenge called the #MovetoZeroChallenge. The idea behind the campaign is to take old clothes and shoes and put a creative spin on them, and these clothes will be able to be donated to have a second life.
I think that unlike most of their sustainability campaigns, I think that they have done a good job promoting this on social media. Over the past 2-3 years, the trendy way to buy and sell clothing is through thrift shops and resale services. The “vintage” look has all of a sudden become the new cool way for people to dress, and Nike was able to capitalize on this trend and use it to promote sustainability.
Overall, I think that the “Move to Zero” campaign is a good one that Nike should continue to push. I feel like their past sustainability campaigns like “Bloom over Doom” were never promoted as much as they should have been, and that made me question the motives of the company. Although you still have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the website to find the sustainability page, I think that this is a step in the right direction for Nike in terms of effectively executing environmental campaigns.
Connect with Hunter on LinkedIn
Follow Hunter’s Blog
I think this is a really interesting and promising campaign for a mega-corporation like Nike. With the growing trend of “greenwashing” within PR and skepticism about marketing sustainability, I appreciate seeing genuine efforts to reduce textile waste. I’m curious to see whether they will meet their goals with this campaign and how that will be used as a asset from promoting their company as more “sustainable” despite their large contribution to landfills across the world.
I fully agree that almost any kind of campaign a company puts forth centered around reducing adverse effects on the environment is a step in the right direction – that is, if they are actually making steps in the right direction. The concept of greenwashing is all-too-common. The clothing brand H&M is a notorious example of greenwashing; The company produced a line of “recycled” clothing, but the production of that clothing actually produced more harmful environmental output than their regular clothing products. One could say that this kind of campaign is altogether positive, given that it starts a conversation and draws attention to the important issue of environmental stresses and a need for change. Ultimately, however, I believe that if a company is merely using the environment as a means of marketing, then it is largely an unethical practice. I hope we come to find out Nike is not one of these companies!
I think that this is a pretty good campaign on Nike’s part. I’m curious though the see how they are achieving their goals. After a quick Google search, I found that Nike produced a yearly total of 10.94 millions tons in greenhouse gas emissions. So reducing half a million of those emissions is actually a good and realistic goal to have. I think that’s a little more than 5%. I wonder if most of their emissions come from waste from their factories or exhaust from their distributing vehicles, and what their plan of attack is, along with how large of a focus this is with those individuals working for Nike.