Adidas is releasing a new shoe that is made from plastic collected from the oceans.
Plastic ocean pollution is an increasingly important environmental concern, with the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch‘ spanning an area roughly twice the size of the continental US. One of the most pressing concerns is how the plastic is travelling up the food chain:
The patch is made up largely of broken down microplastics – small particles of non-biodegradable material drawn together at the convergence of different ocean currents – which appear as a kind of cloudy soup.
There are at least 260 known species which feed on these microplastic particles, confusing them for plankton. These plastics then travel up the food chain, resting in the stomachs of increasingly larger predators, like tuna or mahi-mahi, for instance.
It takes about 600 years for plastic in the ocean to fully break down.
Adidas’s new shoes look to take that plastic pollution and make something useful with it. The shoes are part of a partnership between the athletic sports brand and Parley for the Oceans, and will be made with 95% ocean plastic.
The shoes and are expected to be released in 2017 and retail for $220.
Check out a gallery of the shoes and a teaser video below:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iisMyJdkyqg?rel=0&showinfo=0]
