The two companies aim at presenting the market with greener than green sportswear

Aug 14, 2012 07:22 GMT  ·  By

Those of you who are into sports probably know that Abel Kirui, the long-distance runner for Kenya, just won a silver medal at this year's London Olympic Games for his performance at the marathon. However, it is quite unlikely that many are familiar with the fact that Abel Kirui ran all that distance dressed in recycled plastic bottles.

This is because Nike, the sportswear company that provided Abel Kirui with his running equipment, decided that it was high time to start paying more attention to the environment and take recycling to a whole other level.

As Nike's representatives explain, Kirui's singlet was manufactured using recycled plastic bottles, which were turned into flakes, melted and then spun into thread.

Moreover, dyeing the clothes required absolutely no use of water, as Dutch company DyeCoo stepped up and offered recycled carbon dioxide as a trustworthy and green oriented alternative. Business Green reports that Nike's partnership with DyCoo dates back to earlier this year, when the renown sportswear manufacturer decided that its future development plans required access to the latter's waterless textile dyeing machines.

According to the same source, Martin Lotti, global design director for the Olympics, explained how, “Elite athletes demand high performance technology that delivers every time they train and race. The recycled fabric and water-free dye process we have used for the Kenya singlet is the perfect combination of lightweight performance and low environmental impact.”

It comes as no surprise that Adidas, which is long competing with Nike for customers and quality of products, chose to go in a very similar direction and recently entered a partnership with the Yeh Group, which supposedly has access to a dyeing technology not all that different from DyeCoo's.

Thus, Adidas succeeded in providing 70,000 volunteers at this year's Olympics with uniforms made from recycled materials.

With these two major sportswear manufacturers doing their best in greening-up their agenda, we believe it safe to assume that our sport's industry will soon undergo a significant green make-over.