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US National Soccer Team To Debut 100% Recycled Jerseys


Jake de Grazia - Contributing Writer
Posted on Tuesday 2nd March 2010

Source: footballfashion.org
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On Wednesday, the US National Soccer Team plays the Netherlands in its final tune-up match before this summer's World Cup tournament.

Both teams will be wearing jerseys made of plastic bottles rescued from landfills in Japan and Korea.

Nike and their suppliers did the rescuing, designing, and manufacturing, and the USA and the Netherlands are only two of the ten teams for which they have provided 100% recycled jerseys. Brazil, Portugal, England*, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Serbia, and Slovenia are the other eight. And that means that every Nike jersey in the 2010 world cup will have been made from 100% recycled materials.

For more information, read this post from the World Cup Blog and this post on Treehugger.

And, in case you want to see the jerseys in action, the USA vs. Netherlands match kicks off at 2:45 PM EST on Wednesday, March 3. It'll be televised live on ESPN2.

(Thanks to Earth911.com.)

*You'll notice that Team England isn't pictured in the photograph above. They are present in the photograph accompanying this article, but they are not mentioned in some other articles about the recycled jerseys, and that seems strange to me. Maybe they aren't wearing the jerseys? Maybe they're not working with Nike anymore? If anyone knows, please share in the comments. Thanks!
Guest's picture
Posted on 2 March 2010 - 5:12pm by Guest.
England uses Umbro jerseys.
jdegrazia's picture
Posted on 2 March 2010 - 5:38pm by jdegrazia.
And Nike owns Umbro. And that's why the England player was there for the photo shoot. I wonder if the Umbro jerseys are made from recycled materials too...
Guest's picture
Posted on 2 March 2010 - 6:58pm by Guest.
Japan and Korea do not allow PET bottles to be sent to landfills. Every single one of them is recycled. So while the underlying facts of the article are accurate you have created a false impression that Nike did something special to "rescue" those bottles. All they did was obtain the resin from the recycling programs in those two countries which already exist, and recycle 100% of all PET bottles in those countries
Trust Nike to claim credit for something they didnt do.
jdegrazia's picture
Posted on 2 March 2010 - 11:50pm by jdegrazia.
Where did you read that? I'd love to hear more details. If Nike has, in fact, tricked me into giving them too much credit, I'd love to post something explaining the situation.
Guest's picture
Posted on 3 March 2010 - 4:35am by Guest.
I live in Japan. Recycling here is very strict. OK, I should probably qualify that and say "in most communities" it is very strict. You have to separate out all your garbage into cans, bottles, metal, pet bottles, plastic, paper, other burnable, and other nonburnable products. The only stuff that goes to the landfill is the "other nonburnable" category. In all major cities, and even most rural areas, if the rubbish is not sorted, the sanitation company will refuse to pick it up, and just leave it there.
Furthermore, most every community in the country has some system of identifying whose rubbish is in what bag (varying from place to place), so if your garbage is unsorted, everyone in the entire neighborhood knows "OMG! Endo-san doesnt sort his garbage!!!!"
I cant give you any reliable statistic, but I read somewhere that 99% of PET bottles sold in Japan are recycled (and the other 1% are probably lying on the side of the road, and just havent been found and returned yet). There are several companies that produce fabric from PETE (recycled PET) and Im pretty sure that Nike has just purchased the fabric from one of these companies and used it for the uniforms.
TO be fair, thats a good thing to be doing. It would be great if other companies made clothes from PETE too. But in the press release Nike is claiming thatthey somehow "rescued the bottles from the landfill" and that just is not true. Typical evil Nike, taking credit for something they didnt do.

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