Nike's Phil Berry on Building a Greener Shoe

Source: www.sustainablelifemedia.com

                                                      

As former director of manufacturing for Nike Considered, the footwear giant's green product design initiative, Phil Berry put Nike suppliers through their paces. In this exclusive interview, Phil discusses the company's challenges and triumphs in managing its environmental impact — at factories in Asia and around the world.

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SLM: Phil, in your time at Nike you held a few different titles — Global Sustainability Engineering Manager and Technical Director of Sustainable Footwear, to name a couple — but all of your various roles dealt, at bottom, with helping the company create sustainable products and processes. How did you first come to Nike in 1996, and what were your goals within the company at that time?

Phil: Eleven years ago, when Nike called, I was running my own consulting company teaching sustainability techniques to manufacturing businesses in the developing world. While working for the state environmental agency in Oregon, I had created a system for teaching “profitable sustainability.” By 1996, I had spent two years using that system to teach businesses in India to reduce pollution and improve operational efficiency. I came to realize that there are significant limitations to how much good you can do in a manufacturing supply chain without also redesigning the product.

I originally came to Nike to help reduce environmental impacts in the footwear supply chain in Asia. Specifically, we realized that solid waste was the largest environmental impact in footwear production. So, my first focus was educating the footwear supply chain about impacts and building a pollution prevention program in Asia. What attracted me to Nike, and keeps me excited about our work here, is the potential to achieve positive environmental impacts in the supply chain through product design.

SLM: How has Nike's approach to sustainability evolved during your time with the company?

Phil: A wasteful design cannot be dramatically improved by the supply chain alone.  Any design sends a signal to the supply chain — “we want it made this way” or “we want it to look like this.” That signal reverberates back through the supply chain. A wasteful design causes the supply chain to develop wasteful raw materials and wasteful manufacturing processes.

Nike has evolved from a focus on improving the environmental performance of the supply chain to emphasizing communications of the environmental implications of design. We still have systems and metrics in place to maintain continuous improvement in the environmental performance of the supply chain. The critical shift is to enhance those supply chain efforts through conscious choices resulting in more effective product design. Our sustainable product design efforts — what we call Nike Considered — send positive signals throughout the supply chain.

SLM: “Carbon footprint” is a phrase heard much more often in corporate boardrooms these days. Given the enormous reach of Nike products and the factories that manufacture them, how is Nike working to reduce the climate impact of its global supply chain?

Phil: We all need to be aware of climate change — I believe we have ten years, maybe less, to make dramatic changes. It’s that serious. Nike’s efforts on the issue are extensive. Great detail of our efforts is available online. Rather than recount them I’ll just say that Gary Hirshberg, CEO of organic yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm, chairs a group called Climate Counts. A few months ago, Climate Counts ranked Nike, Canon, and Unilever as the brands that have done the most work on climate change. Though we’ve made great strides as a company, we all need to be doing more. We are creating a new method to assess the baseline of the “total carbon load” of our products — including what is embedded in our raw materials. This will help us shape  direction to achieve truly low-carbon product.

SLM: A good deal of Nike product manufacturing takes place in Asia. What are some of the biggest challenges — and biggest business opportunities — associated with greening Nike contract factories in Asia?

Phil: I think it surprises most Americans when I say that Asian cultures, including China, have an easier time envisioning a sustainable approach to business than do we in the U.S. I think we have an opportunity to harness that understanding and engage our Asian suppliers in the creation of more sustainable materials and processes. The real challenges in Asia are the same as the challenges around the world: finding the will and the ways to move rapidly away from coal and oil to an economy based on renewable energy and truly low-carbon raw materials.

SLM: The Nike Considered footwear line, launched in 2005, is designed to minimize the amount of waste involved in production, as well as the amount of energy used in the manufacture process. Sounds pretty good! Now that the technology is in place, have these efficiencies been applied to other Nike product lines as well?

Phil: To be clear, Nike Considered is not a “technology solution.” We don’t have a magic technology to achieve sustainable products. As is the same with all of design, it’s about choices. We have put in place a design ethos. “Nike Considered” is an expanded way of thinking about product design and product development. It’s about knowing the current footprint and understanding the implications of design choices on that footprint. Finally, it’s about harnessing this inspiration to drive innovation toward ever more sustainable products. For example, we now have several methods for holding shoes together using absolutely no adhesive glue. I know I start to sound like a marketing guy but this where we find the real meaning of the term we use: “There is no finish line.” And, yes, that ethos is spreading across the company. In retrospect, I think it was inevitable that such a compelling ethos would do so.

SLM: What do you consider Nike's greatest successes so far in greening its global supply chain? What does the company need to keep working on?

Phil: Personally, I am very proud of the progress we have made proving to our supply chain partners that sustainability can be a very profitable part of their business’ financial equation. I have had many suppliers tell me that the implementation of sustainability in their business has done a lot more than just reduce costs — it has become a competitive advantage to bring in new business from the increasing number of brands that are also looking to create more sustainable products.

We need to achieve even more significant reductions in the carbon footprint of our products and our supply chain. Everyone in the industry does. But Nike’s opportunity is to lead the way in how we all envision and create products that truly have low carbon intensity. This is not about offsetting the carbon that goes into a product by planting trees or trading credits, but about creating, understanding and reducing the real, total carbon footprint of a product.

SLM: What's next for the company in terms of sustainability?

Phil: You'll see more products bearing the label of Nike Considered Design label. These will continue to be products that have tangible environmental attributes. We aren’t quite ready to bring the footprint for carbon into the Nike Considered Design equation, yet but we’re planning for the future. Read more about our plans online.