Adidas, Allbirds Collab for Environmentally Friendly Shoe

Adidas has teamed with Allbirds to create a shoe that they say will have “the lowest ever carbon footprint.”

The partnership aims to innovate on manufacturing and supply chain processes in addition to exploring renewable material resources. To that end, Adidas and Allbirds will open the doors to each other’s suite of sustainable innovations and unlock the opportunity to set a new industry standard in the fight against climate change.

“Our brands don’t want to just participate in the sustainability conversation, we want to continue being catalysts and creators of substantial improvement,” says James Carnes, vice president, brand strategy, Adidas. “The recent progress that our brands have made in the name of sustainable innovation has created the perfect momentum for this partnership to influence industry practices forever.

The project also aims to create an athletic shoe that meets Adidas performance standards, which are among the most stringent in the industry. The shoe’s carbon footprint will be analyzed using Allbirds’s lifecycle assessment tool and Adidas’ own carbon footprint tools, which measure end-to-end carbon emissions.

"There is an urgent need to reduce our global carbon number, and this mission is bigger than just Allbirds or Adidas," says Tim Brown, co-founder and co-chief executive officer, Allbirds. "Whether we realize it or not, this is a race that we are all running together as a planet, and it is one that trumps the day-to-day competition of individual companies."