Author: Mitali Srinath, Graphics: Anna Szymoniak
The BRB Bottomline: Adidas’ recent partnership with Parley has led consumers to question whether their initiatives are truly sustainable or just for marketing purposes.
The “Adidas outbreak” has flooded the UC Berkeley campus with thousands of students sporting the brand as their daily footwear of choice. With rapidly expanding consumer bases, many brands like Adidas have developed partnerships with sustainability organizations to diversify their clientele, further innovate their products, and enhance their commitment to social and ethical responsibility. The Adidas and Parley collaboration, for one, revolves around environmental initiatives such as Parley Ocean Plastic and Run for the Oceans. Though these collaborations appear to signal a shift toward a greener Adidas, the brand’s lack of transparency surrounding supply chain and manufacturing processes combined with misleading advertising campaigns have prompted questions about Adidas’ true intentions: is the Parley campaign empty talk or a step toward true sustainability?
A New Hope: Parley and Adidas’ First Steps
The Parley and Adidas collaboration signaled a shift for Adidas into sustainability-oriented practices. In 2015, Adidas began supporting Parley for the Oceans’ education initiatives and Parley’s A.I.R (Avoid, Intercept, Redesign) strategy, which involves the creation of raw materials developed from upcycled plastic waste found on beaches and coastal communities. “It is with these recycled materials that Parley and Adidas have been able to produce one pair of Parley shoes…[preventing] approximately 11 plastic bottles from entering our oceans.”
The Adidas x Parley Collection presented their shared vision with a concept shoe made from reclaimed marine plastic waste at the United Nations in 2015. The prototype featured a color scheme composed of light blue, white, and green shades as an homage to their “Save the Oceans” campaign.
An image of Adidas’ prototype shoes.
Adidas produced over 15 million pairs of shoes using Parley Ocean Plastic in 2020, ultimately replacing the use of plastic microbeads in all Adidas products. As a further advertisement, Parley launched external cleanup operations in 2022 known as the “Run for the Oceans” campaign. Adidas committed to support Parley’s cleanup with the equivalent of 1 plastic bottle for every 10 minutes of activity logged in the Adidas Runtastic app. Parley announced that they could potentially gain 6,760,161 participants actively using the app through this campaign in the first year, and could further develop their operations throughout 2023 and into 2024.
While the Run for the Oceans press run was advertised as an ambitious restructuring of Adidas’s ethics and priorities, the campaign’s impacts were never scrutinized in detail.
How much plastic, quantitatively, did the Run for the Oceans campaign end up saving per year? What was the manufacturing process of the Adidas x Parley shoes? How could ocean clean-ups help to solve the problem of additional plastic pollution? These are just a few questions of many that were left unanswered following the Parley campaign and that have come to spur public doubts about the company’s true intentions behind their sustainability initiatives.
The Controversy Behind the Partnership
Empty Talk or Genuine Sustainability: The Stan Smith Controversy
A major point of contention in Adidas’ accused greenwashing (environmental marketing used to sway public opinion) is the Stan Smith line. When Adidas announced that it was making a sustainable version of its fan-favorite shoe, customers were excited about the release of both a fashionable and sustainable sneaker. However, in September 2021, a French ethics jury declared the Stan Smith Forever line was misleading as the prominently featured slogan “ 100% iconic, 50% recycled,” did not accurately inform consumers of the total proportion of the shoe that was manufactured from recycled plastics.
While the new Stan Smith was more sustainable than previous Adidas lines, the ethics jury found that the percentage of recycled plastic present in the collaboration sneaker fell short of Adidas’ 50% upcycled claim. In response, Adidas recognized the complaint and suggested that the ad did not claim that the shoe was manufactured from 50% upcycled material, but rather, that the shoe was 50% recyclable.
While Adidas did not suffer major consequences from this controversy, other companies like Nike were not so lucky.. The Ellis v. Nike USA, Inc. lawsuit, for example, was filed against Nike in May 2023, claiming that the company had falsely advertised their sustainability line as being made with more than 10% recycled materials. Instead, the collection was found to be made with the non-biodegradable textiles polyester and nylon. The case is currently pending dismissal; however, it has paused the development of the Nike Sustainable Collection and decreased consumer support towards the brand. Nike’s sustainability scandal depicts the possible repercussions of greenwashing: outcomes which Adidas’ Stan Smith Forever line has managed to evade strategically.
The Lack of Supply Chain Transparency
In addition to misleading marketing, Adidas’ lack of disclosure surrounding supply chain processes— specifically, where shoes are manufactured —has led consumers to further question the ethical practices behind the Adidas-Parley product. This lack of detail is evident in the limited information on the company’s operations in the Maldives. While Parley’s website mentions the upcycling process, it leaves out questions about manufacturing that are essential to understanding any company’s environmental footprint. Is Parley’s plastic collected specifically in the Maldives, or similar locations? What kinds of plastics are collected? What does the collection process look like? These are just a few questions that Adidas and Parley have elected to entirely ignore.
Parley’s lack of clarity around the labor model they follow for Parley Ocean plastic collection and production has also drawn attention. It is public knowledge that Adidas follows a direct sourcing production labor model and is subject to “external assessment by independent monitors, participation in the FLA (Fair Labor Association System) third-party complaint system.” However, Parley Ocean Plastic is developed through Parley’s manufacturing department and does not have the same monitoring and regulations that Adidas has for labor, demonstrating a lack of detail about labor conditions and manufacturing within the partnership.
Without concrete details, it is impossible to assess the sustainability of Adidas and Parley’s collaboration.
Profit and Publicity
Adidas’ Surge in Profitability
A year after the announcement of its collaboration with Parley, Adidas disclosed that they had sold 1 million pairs of “Parley for the Oceans” shoes. The collaboration had been so successful that Adidas even developed a new line of shoes for fall/winter 2018 called “Ultra Boost,” which claimed that 80% of the material in the shoe was made entirely from ocean plastic. In 2020, the brand announced an even more ambitious aim of producing 5 million “Parley units” (pairs of Parley Plastic-made shoes).
Both Adidas and Parley shoes underwent a 31% growth in North American sales and a 32% surge in Chinese sales from 2018 to early 2020. Leading up to 2025, Adidas projected growth in net income between 16-18% yearly. Though the brand experienced unprecedented growth in the years following its Parley collaboration, it is impossible to say that the company’s sustainability practices led to this growth with the available information.
A graphic demonstration of Adidas’s financial accomplishments.
To Care or Not To Care: Berkeley Students
Adidas’s growth since the announcement of its “sustainability goals,” is evident in the numbers, but does Adidas’ sustainability even matter to the run-of-the-mill Berkeley student? There is evidence that Adidas consumers may be satisfied taking Adidas’ word for it.
When asking Adidas-wearing, University of California, Berkeley students what they know about the sustainability practices of Adidas, each interviewee had little to no knowledge of the subject despite also asserting the importance of brands being environmentally friendly. When asked “How important is it for shoe companies like Adidas to be environmentally friendly in their production processes?,” Student A commented, “It’s important for brands like Adidas to be environmentally friendly. Due to their rigorous production, big companies are the main contributors to pollution, waste, and greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, it is best to strive to be environmentally friendly to reduce negative environmental impact.” When subsequently asked “Do you know any details about the sustainability practices of Adidas?,” Student A responded, “I honestly don’t know much, just that Adidas claims to use a lot of recycled materials.” When asked the same question Student B stated “I don’t know anything about [Adidas’] business ethicality/sustainability practices.”
While there is a clash of values, it is clear that Berkeley students feel a sense of obligation toward promoting sustainability. When asking Students A and B if as consumers, they feel they have a role in promoting ethical business practices, both responded that they do believe they have a role in setting a good example through making sustainable fashion choices, as trend setting is a large part of fashion. When interviewing 6 other students, each of the individuals agreed with students A and B’s opinions. As Berkeley students, making responsible, ethical fashion choices will influence the next generation of designers and entrepreneurs.
Overall, the “Adidas outbreak” showcases how consumers can still popularize a brand despite the dissonance of their sustainability-centric values. Despite doubts surrounding the ethics of the Adidas- Parley collaboration, Adidas still benefited from the partnership, seeing substantial sales growth in North America and China. When interviewing UC Berkeley students about this hot topic, a gap emerged between the proclaimed environmental values of students and their actual knowledge of Adidas’ sustainability practices, explaining how Adidas is seeing substantial sales despite their questionable sustainability efforts. The incongruity of these values underscores a broader responsibility students must undertake: to educate themselves, adopt, and advocate for ethical fashion practices.
Take-Home Points
- Adidas collaborated with Parley, focusing on developing shoes from upcycled plastic waste known as Ocean Plastic.
- Despite these efforts, Adidas faced criticism of its sustainability initiatives for a lack of supply chain transparency.
- The controversy over the false advertisement of the Stan Smith line and their ‘50% recycled material,’ developed accusations of greenwashing.
- Adidas’ sustainability initiatives contributed to significant profitability and sales growth, demonstrating consumer interest despite a general lack of knowledge about sustainability.
- Interviews with Berkeley students revealed a discordance between values and actions – many students preached the importance of sustainability but admitted to limited knowledge of Adidas’ business practices