Translations

PUMA’s goal for reducing CO2 and packaging

4. Environment

Waste management

Sector Business / Distribution

Year 2010

Country Germany

Transmitter

Context

Puma, the high-end athletic shoes and sportswear company, was founded in 1948 by Rudolf Dassler in Herzogenaurach, Germany. Since its beginning, the company has gained its reputation by supporting a multitude of athletes and sportsclubs such as Pelé and his World Cup winning Brazilian team and more recently Usain Bolt, the Jamaican track gold medallist.

Today, Puma has taken on the long-term mission of becoming the most desirable and sustainable Sportslifestyle company. CEO Jochen Zeitz has already announced that the company will completely offset its own global CO2 emissions to become the first carbon neutral company within the sportlifestyle industry. They have been collecting E-KPIs (Environmental Key Performance Indicators) from all its offices, warehouses and stores worldwide for the last five years to determine the company’s total carbon footprint on an annual basis. Puma requires its local offices, stores and warehouses to switch to electricity from renewable sources wherever feasible. Their headquarters, which became the first carbon neutral company head office in their industry, actively supports a wind farm in Turkey as a CO2 offsetting project.

In addition, Puma will offset emissions from the international travel of all Puma-sponsored national football teams taking part in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa which are Algeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Italy, Switzerland, and Uruguay. To further illustrate the importance of UNEP’s ‘call to action’, Puma has decided to go one step beyond and offset all local travel and accommodation as well

Objectives

To reduce the amount of waste and CO2 emissions from packaging

APPROACH

Along with renowned industrial designer Yves Béhar, Puma has come up with the “Clever Little Bag” to replace the cardboard shoebox with a re-usable shoe bag. . Less packaging means fewer raw materials, less use of water and energy to produce, and less weight to ship and to be disposed of. The new innovative solution will significantly reduce the amount of waste and CO2 emissions that traditional product packaging such as shoe-boxes and apparel polyethylene bags generate. This aligns directly with PUMA’s target of reducing carbon, energy, water, and waste by 25%, and developing 50% of its international product collections in footwear, apparel and accessories according to best practice sustainability standards by 2015.

Puma’s apparel collections will be bagged using sustainable material, replacing traditional polyethylene bags. This means that 720 tons of polyethylene bags can be avoided per year, which equals a saving of 29 million plastic bags — enough to cover an area the size of 1000 football pitches. Furthermore, Puma T-shirts will be folded one more time to reduce the packaging size and thus saving CO2 emissions and costs during transport.

By switching out current plastic and paper shopping bags in Puma stores and replacing them with sustainable biodegradable bags the sportlifestyle company is looking to save another 192 tons of plastic and 293 tons of paper annually.

CONTRIBUTION TO COMPANY PERFORMANCE

Reduction of water, energy and diesel consumption on the manufacturing level by more than 60% per year
Savings on the production side due to less material used, reducing weight during transport and eliminating the need for extra plastic carrier bags