SneakAhead Open Letter / detailed - extended version
Dear Nike, Adidas, Puma, New Balance, Sketchers, Vans, Asics, Converse, Reebok, and Under Armour, etc.
We love your sneakers! They LOOK super cool.
What we don’t love is the way you MAKE them. Using polluting materials to make shoes is not cool. We’re also unsure whether you treat the people who make our sneakers fairly, due to the lack of transparency.
You’ve been making some of the best-performing running shoes for decades, but you are running out of time to act on the climate and social emergency.
You are one of the leading sneaker brands – we want you to lead in sustainability too, by:
· Respecting human rights and labour rights
Just as you have driven the agenda in enhancing the design and functionality of our sneakers, we would like you to drive the agenda in safeguarding and enhancing the lives of millions of workers throughout your supply chains. Self-regulation (including the creation of statements about codes of conduct, and the so-called reassurance that factory administrators have signed their "agreement and support") has not done enough to improve the issues of poverty in work, child and forced labour, the right to represent, along with a list of other pernicious issues in the global footwear supply chains. You could exert the most positive influence of any organisations on this by implementing best business practices that deliver the following:
- Paying your workers throughout your supply chains a living wage. We like this proposal on how to do this.
- Engage proactively to ensure all the workers in your supply chain have a voice and monitor their rights to self-representation whether by allowing Trade Union membership or other equivalent means. In locations where unions are forbidden by law, drive and support the creation of other mechanisms that allow workers to voice their concerns, and fund independent and anonymous worker hot line services.
- Ensure that your purchasing practices do not result in commonly reported issues such as poor working conditions and low pay for workers.
- Making sure workers do not get left penniless if their factory goes bankrupt – sign up to funds that guarantee agreed redundancy payment for workers when they need it.
- Ensuring safe working conditions for all workers in footwear supply chains
No one should die because their workplace was unsafe. Ensure all commercial contracts make it possible for lead suppliers, subcontractors, service companies and cooperatives to comply with legal requirements and international best practice in relation to health and safety. Publish reports on company audits, and progress in cases of non-compliance with corporate, social and environmental requirements.
· Saying no to oil
Stop using non-renewable and highly polluting petroleum-based materials, as well as harsh chemicals in our sneakers. Use safe low-carbon alternatives instead. Currently only 5% of sneakers are manufactured using sustainable materials - this is not enough. Moving forward, we’d like you to make it 100% by 2030.
· Protecting our rainforests
Following the latest report by Stand.Earth & Slow Factory we are very concerned about the increased rate of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest which is mainly caused by cattle farming. You have a shared responsibility to protect the world’s largest rainforest and ensure that the leather in our sneakers is deforestation-free. You can do so by suspending contracts with any suppliers that cannot provide full traceability throughout the entire cattle life-cycle.
· Moving from a linear to circular economy business model
Whilst you are developing close-loop solutions and working on long-term goals like net zero, please provide more immediate and widely available services to tackle the problem of shoe waste. Enable us to extend the life of our sneakers by offering repair services at an affordable price and provide takeback schemes in ALL your stores. For sneakers that are beyond repair you could optimise materials recovery through remanufacturing or recycling.
· Stop greenwashing and wokewashing
We trust the quality of your sneakers, but we would also like to trust that you don’t mislead us by sneaky greenwashing or wokewashing. For example, if a sneaker contains only 25% recycled materials, it should not be marketed “sustainable” because most of its components are NOT sustainable. We want to see real contributions to environmental and social change. Please back up advertising claims with facts and data, available to anyone who wants to check.
· Being fully transparent
- We would like you to set a good example by disclosing all your social and environmental policies, practices and impacts across your entire supply chain (for instance as listed in the Fashion Transparency Index). This would include names and addresses of suppliers, how many workers they employ, what they get paid, and how people can complain if something goes wrong. How many sneakers you produce, what chemicals are used in each line of sneakers, animal welfare standards, biodiversity impact, etc.
- We’d love to see where our sneakers are made and by whom.
- Be ahead of the game and make it easy for us to trace the origin of the sneakers we buy, the breakdown of materials, and their carbon footprint - for example by placing a blockchain linked QR codes in sneakers.
Looking forward to you Sneaking Ahead and making our sneakers even cooler!
DO THE RIGHT THING.