adidas is continuing to push the boundaries of footwear design and raise awareness to the threat of plastic pollution with their collaboration with nonprofit organization Parley for the Oceans.
The UltraBOOST Uncaged Parley are the first mass-produced sneakers that are primarily made from plastics that have been recovered from the ocean. Water bottles, grocery bags and nylon fishing nets that were found during one of Parley's cleanup expeditions have been upcycled into yarn, which has then been weaved to create the majority of the Primekint upper of the sneaker. Other elements of the environmentally conscious kicks – including the laces, heel cap base material, heel webbing, heel lining and the sock-liner cover – have also been made of recycled materials.
According to adidas, each pair of just-released UltraBoost Uncaged Parley shoes contains the equivalent of 11 plastic water bottles that have been retrieved from Parley’s clean-up operations, which are located in the Maldives and along 1,000 coral islands off the western coast of India. The brand has also developed a line of soccer jerseys made of recycled ocean plastic.
Looking to get your hands on a pair of the Parley x adidas UltraBOOST Uncaged sneakers? You're in luck... adidas will be releasing 7,000 pairs in the coming days, before working on rolling out one million pairs next year.
“But we won’t stop there,” adidas executive board member Eric Liedtke said in a release. “We will make one million pairs of shoes using Parley Ocean Plastic in 2017 – and our ultimate ambition is to eliminate virgin plastic from our supply chain.”
If adidas produces one million pairs of the UltraBoost Uncaged Parley shoes in the next year from retrieved plastic trash, that means the equivalent of 11 million water bottles could potentially be removed from the oceans.
That’s a significant impact.
