Adidas is developing plant-based leather that will be used to make shoes, its latest sustainability initiative after producing 15 million pairs of recycled plastic sneakers in 2020

Adidas developing plant-based leather to be used in shoes – Business Insider

Adidas is developing a plant-based leather material that will be used to make shoes. 

The material, which Adidas is working on with partners, will be made from mycelium, which is part of a fungus. 

The new material is one of several sustainability initiatives Adidas has in the works. The company said it produced 15 million pairs of shoes in 2020 that were made from recycled plastic waste collected from beaches and coastal regions.

Adidas will also use recycled polyester in 60% of its products starting in 2021 and has started developing a new recycled cotton material.

Adidas is going plant-based. 

The athletic-wear company announced on Monday that it’s working on a new material, a plant-based leather that will be used to make shoes. The leather alternative is made from mycelium, which is part of a fungus. 

Adidas said it is working on the plant-based leather with partners, but did not announce when shoes made with the material would join its lineup.

The company began offering a vegan version of one of its most popular shoes, the Stan Smith, in 2020, and has committed to banning fur from its products.

The new material is one of several sustainability initiatives for Adidas, which has stated a goal to end plastic waste. Adidas revealed that in 2020, it produced 15 million pairs of shoes made from recycled plastic waste and said its goal is to produce 17 million pairs next year.

The plastic used in the shoes was collected from beaches and coastal regions, Adidas said. 

Adidas added sneakers made of recycled plastic to its lineup in 2017 when it unveiled “Parley” versions of its popular Ultraboost running shoes. The shoes contain thread made from ocean plastic waste, which is incorporated into the laces, heel webbing, heel lining, and sock liner covers.

Beyond upcycled plastic, Adidas has started developing a new recycled cotton material and is already using recycled polyester in its product lineup — the company announced Monday that more than 60% of its product range will contain the material beginning in 2021.

Sustainability has been an emerging trend in the footwear industry for several years, with Adidas and sneaker upstarts like Allbirds leading the charge (the two companies are even collaborating on a low-carbon-footprint shoe together). More recently, companies like Everlane and Nike have also begun manufacturing their own more sustainable footwear. 

The trend is driven by sneakers’ popularity, particularly in the US, where they’re often seen as a status symbol. As Business Insider’s Dennis Green reported in 2019, greener footwear is likely to make a bigger impression with customers than other types of apparel. 

Plus, as Eric Liedtke, Adidas’ executive board member and brand head, told Business Insider last year, making sneakers more sustainable is a logical place to start given the complex nature of the manufacturing process.

“Footwear — it’s the greatest challenge, if you will,” Liedtke said. “You’ve got to take on the greatest challenge first and set the edge, or set the point on, bringing it to the rest of your product offering.”

A wing and a prayer: how birds are coping with the climate crisis

Some of our best-loved species are changing their breeding cycles and heading north in their fight for survival in a warmer world

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/03/a-wing-and-a-prayer-how-birds-are-coping-with-the-climate-crisis

Lockdown has sparked a renewed interest in our garden birds, with millions of us enjoying watching them from our windows. But could some species – including the common and familiar great tit – vanish from Britain’s gardens by the end of the century?

Researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, working with the University of Oxford, have modelled how great tits are reacting to the climate crisis. Specifically, are the birds able to respond to the earlier emergence of the caterpillars on which they feed their chicks?

Birds such as great tits have evolved to time their breeding cycle so it coincides with the peak of moth caterpillars that feed on oak leaves, which traditionally happens in late May and June. But as temperatures rise, so oaks are coming into leaf earlier, and the caterpillars have responded by hatching out earlier too.

This means that when the great tit chicks are ready to be fed, the peak of caterpillars is already coming to an end. Because the parent birds need to find 1,000 caterpillars every day for their hungry offspring, any mismatch is likely to dramatically reduce breeding success.

The researchers found that although the birds can respond to climatic shifts, they are not doing so quickly enough. Lead author Emily Simmonds estimates that the tipping point comes when oak leaves, and their associated caterpillars, appear 24 days earlier than usual.

The discovery that birds can and do respond to climate change by breeding earlier than normal was first made in the 1990s by Dr Humphrey Crick, a scientist working at the British Trust for Ornithology. He was analysing thousands of cards from the BTO’s long-running Nest Record Scheme, which had been filled in by amateur birdwatchers over the previous half-century, detailing the dates when eggs are laid and chicks hatch.

Crick noticed a surprising trend: for many species, the date on which they laid their eggs had moved forward by an average of nine days. The resulting landmark paper, “UK birds are laying eggs earlier”, published in the journal Nature in 1997, provided some of the earliest empirical evidence that wild creatures were already responding to a warming climate.

A decade later, in 2006, I remember Bill Oddie introducing  Springwatch with the astonishing news that every blue tit nest they were monitoring had already fledged young – several weeks earlier than usual. Because blue tits only have one brood, they must respond very rapidly to changes such as earlier springs. If they fail to do so quickly enough, their numbers will plummet.

At the end of his 1997 paper, Humphrey Crick made this prophetic comment: “For birds, earlier nesting could be beneficial if juvenile survival is enhanced by a prolonged period before winter. Conversely, birds may be adversely affected if they become unsynchronised with the phenology of their food supplies.”

Less than a quarter of a century later, both parts of that prediction appear to be coming true. In the short term, a longer breeding season has benefits, especially fr birds such as the robin, blackbird and song thrush, which produce two or more broods of young. Starting to nest earlier in the year might allow them to squeeze in an extra brood, and so produce more offspring in total.

Professor James Pearce-Higgins, the BTO’s director of science, points out that our smallest birds, such as goldcrests, wrens and long-tailed tits, are benefiting from another aspect of climate change: the much milder winters of recent years.

He also points to the positive impact of our habit of feeding garden birds, which helps species such as blue tits, great tits and goldfinches. At present, he suggests that the advantages of higher winter survival rates outweigh the failure to synchronise with the spring food supply, though that may not always be so.

Another climate-driven success is the way many species are now expanding northwards. The latest European Breeding Bird Atlas reveals that, on average, the ranges of Europe’s breeding birds have shifted north by 28km (17.5 miles) since the original survey was done in the late 1980s – almost 1km every year.

This may not sound like much, but over time it will allow species once confined to continental Europe to cross the Channel and colonise the UK. Indeed, given that some species respond much faster than others, several (including cattle egrets and great white egrets) have already done so.

But as our climate becomes less predictable, with more extreme weather events such as storms, droughts and floods, what scientists have called the “honeymoon period” will come to an abrupt end.

As Professor Pearce-Higgins notes, ground-feeding birds may not be able to cope with prolonged summer droughts, which make it harder for them to find food: “One potential exception to this positive picture of warmer temperatures is thrushes and blackbirds, which rely on soil invertebrates. We know, from a study we have run recently asking schoolchildren to count earthworms in school playing fields, that the availability of worms – a major food source for many species – declines significantly in summer, particularly when it is dry.”

So, as we stand on the precipice of a runaway warming world, the future for many of our best-known and best-loved birds remains in the balance.

• Stephen Moss is a naturalist and author who runs an MA in nature and travel writing at Bath Spa University. His latest book, The Swallow: A Biography, is published by Square Peg.