World Cup shirts to be made of old bottles
Reuters - Friday 26 February 2010, 11:53
LONDON - Many of the world's top soccer
players, including Cristiano Ronaldo, will be wearing shirts
made of old plastic bottles at the World Cup in South Africa.
Nike said shirts for the nine national teams wearing its
gear, including one of the favourites Brazil, would be made from
polyester recycled from used bottles.
Each shirt would use up to eight plastic bottles retrieved
from Japanese and Taiwanese landfill sites, said Nike, the
world's biggest sports goods manufacturer.
All of the nine teams, who also include Portugal,
Netherlands and the United States, will wear the shirts.
Nike says they will keep players drier and cooler than
previous kit while reducing energy consumption in manufacture by
30 percent compared to normal polyester.
Thirty-two teams will be at the month-long finals starting
on June 11.
Manufacture of the shirts, which will also be sold to fans,
used 13 million plastic bottles - enough to fill 29 football
pitches - the U.S. company said in a media release.
The bottles were melted to produce polyester yarn, which
Nike says will ensure the most environmentally-friendly kit
ever.
"We are equipping athletes with newly designed uniforms that
not only look great and deliver performance benefits, but are
also made with recycled materials, creating less impact on our
environment," said Charlie Denson, president of Nike Brand.
Nike, which dominates sales in athletics and basketball, is
mounting a major campaign to win a bigger share in football, the
world's most popular sport.
The company told Reuters earlier this week that it would
stage a marketing blitz at the World Cup to attack rivals
Adidas, the long-time market leader.
South Africa says carbon emissions from the World Cup are
expected to soar compared with the 2006 tournament in Germany
but it will invest in carbon credits to mitigate the impact.
Nearly seven percent of the emissions will come from air travel
to the long-haul destination.