Footballers including Cristiano Ronaldo and Robinho will take to the pitch in the World Cup in South Africa this summer wearing shirts made out of recycled plastic bottles.
Nike announced yesterday that for this first time its nine national teams, which include Brazil, Portugal and The Netherlands, will wear tops made entirely from polyester.
The environmentally-friendly move will see each shirt made from up to eight recycled plastic bottles.
Manufacturing the shirts this way has prevented nearly 13million plastic bottles, totaling almost 254 tonnes of polyester waste, from going into landfill sites.
This amount would be enough to cover more than 29 football pitches.
To make the 2010 national team kits, Nike’s fabric suppliers sourced discarded plastic bottles from Japanese and Taiwanese landfill sites and then melted them down to produce new yarn that was ultimately converted to fabric for the jerseys.
This process saves raw materials and reduces energy consumption by up to 30 per cent compared to manufacturing virgin polyester.
News Source: Daily Mail
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