Adidas X Allbirds: Team Up!

Futurecraft.Footprint is a proof of concept for the lowest carbon footprint sneaker to date.

It’s not often that we see a collaboration between big sneaker brands. But to start the fight against a common foe, Allbirds and Adidas decided to work together to create a running sneaker with the lowest carbon footprint possible.  

Collaborate

The sneaker market is filled with brands, all trying to compete and differentiate themselves to stay relevant in the eyes of the consumer. Coming up with innovative ideas, keeping an eye on the competitors, hiding sources and out-executing the other brands is the very nature of the game. Most of the time at least. Once in a while we see how collaboration instead of competition can move the needle and bring us closer to a solution in our fight against climate change. Back in May of 2020, Allbirds and Adidas first announced their plans to work together to create the world’s lowest carbon footprint sneaker. With the average sneaker having a carbon footprint of more than 13kg, it seemed like an impossible task to get this number close to 2kg. A year later, the brands revealed a sneaker that accounts for only 2,94kg, as is proudly displayed on the side of the midsole.  

Shared Expertise

Creating a performance running sneaker with such a low carbon footprint took all of Allbirds material and life cycle assessment expertise. Every part of the production process was analyzed and optimized to minimize its carbon footprint. This meant going into every part of manufacturing, packaging, transportation, use and end-of-life. The materials of the Futurecraf.Footprint sneakers are an immediate reflection of the current state of material innovation at both Allbirds and Adidas. The sneakers are made with a selection of materials that supposedly have a lower impact on the environment. Both the midsole and lining are partly made with sugarcane foam, an Allbirds invention that was once introduced to the world as Sweetfoam. The rest of the upper is mainly made out of recycled polyester. This in line with Adidas’ mission to not use any virgin polyester in their products by 2024. Their long-term partnership with Parley for the Oceans has been a big accelerator in this and has allowed them to use recycled ocean plastic and repurpose them into sneakers at scale. 

A Shared Future

A lot of up and coming sustainable sneaker brands have showed a different approach to business than classic brands have been doing in the past. These brands are focusing on collaboration and helping each other, to create as much positive impact as possible. This has been done through the sharing of knowledge and by making new materials open source. And as James Carnes, vice president of brand strategy at Adidas, told Vogue in an interview last year: “When you think about competition, you just have to change your perspective. We’re competing in the same race against time, the thing that’s sitting between us and a better future. We’re not really competing with each other anymore—we’re competing with this external force.” I am happy the tide is seemingly starting to shift and hope collaboration for a better future will be happening more often in the near future. The Allbirds x Adidas sneakers are expected to see an initial launch in may with a raffle of 100 pairs to adidas creators club members, before a Fall/Winter 2021 release limited to 10,000 pairs, and finally a wider release in Spring/Summer2022.