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by Darcy Winslow,
Nike
Director of Women's Footwear
As the world's leading sports and fitness
company, Nike has always been committed to
our customers' good health. We design footwear
for people who like to play, compete and get
the most out of life and our reputation is
built on delivering innovative, high-performance
products that enable elite athletes and weekend
warriors alike to run harder, faster, and
longer on the road to well being.
 In
recent years, we have come to see that our
customers' health and our own ability to compete
are inseparable from the health of the environment.
Product innovation and performance remain
Nike's first priority, but our sense of design
excellence now includes a commitment to ecological
intelligence, an awareness of the impact of
our products on the natural world, and in
general our responsibility as a global corporate
citizen.
Nike took a decisive step toward ecologically
intelligent design in 1998 when we started
working with MBDC.
Together we sought to determine the chemical
composition and environmental effects of the
materials and manufacturing processes used
to produce Nike's line of athletic footwear.
Focusing primarily on our global footwear
operations, the process began with factory
visits to China, where a combined team of
Nike and MBDC collected samples of rubber,
leather, nylon, polyester foams and other
materials to begin testing.
Following MBDC's design protocol, we have
begun systematically analyzing every material
used in Nike footwear. Materials with chemicals
determined to have adverse effects on environmental
health will be replaced with chemicals, or
in some cases materials, from a "positive
list." Positive ingredients are those that
can be either retrieved and reused in new
products or naturally metabolized into nature's
biological systems. An athletic shoe of the
future, for example, might be designed with
a fully compostable rubber sole that abrades
nutrients for the soil during a long Sunday
run and a nylon upper that can be returned
to Nike through the new "Reuse-A-Shoe" recycling
program. Our goal is to take responsibility
for our product through its entire life.
We are already well on our way. A two-phase
collaborative effort between Nike, MBDC, and
our vendors, launched in 2000, is setting
new design guidelines and auditing all of
our major material suppliers. In early 2001,
we began to focus scientific research on the
chemicals used in our manufacturing process.
The potential impact of our work is limited
only by the speed with which we can engage
our most innovative and forward-thinking suppliers.
While this has been challenging for some,
the leaders-such as DuPont, BASF, and Dow-are
contributing significantly. They too foresee
the positive impacts of ecologically intelligent
design and their new fabrics and polymers
should meet the emerging demand for technical
materials that can be used again and again.
Ultimately, we hope to fully integrate ecologically
intelligent design into the making of all
Nike products.
To do so Nike aims to:
- Eliminate the concept of waste in our
product design, using materials, energy,
and resources that can be readily recycled,
renewed or reabsorbed back into nature.
- Eliminate all substances that are known
or suspected to be harmful to human health
or the health of natural systems.
- Close the loop and take full responsibility
for our products at all stages of our product
and process lifecycle, including the end
of a product's useful life when consumers
are likely to dispose of it.
- Develop financial structures that promote
greater product stewardship in design, engineering,
and manufacturing, as well as create new
financial models to reflect the full cost
of doing business.
We expect each of these innovations to generate
multiple benefits for Nike and our customers;
they are the signposts on our path to a future
of healthy prosperity.
It is not always an easy path. Several years
ago, when Nike first began working with MBDC,
the scope of the changes we were going to
have to make turned my world upside-down.
The challenges at times seemed overwhelming.
But once we understood that embracing ecologically
intelligent design was the right thing to
do, we had to follow our own best advice-we
had to just do it.
The work remains as challenging as ever,
but it is also the most rewarding work I have
ever done. It has changed me personally, and
now I know there's no looking back.
Darcy Winslow was recently named Director
of Nike's newly formed Women's Footwear division.
Previous to this, she was Nike's General Manager
of Sustainable Business Strategies—Footwear.
A former AAU Swimming and Gymnastics Coach,
Darcy began her career at Nike as an intern
in the Nike Sports Research Lab in 1988. She
has held a variety of positions at Nike, including
NSRL Research Associate, Manager for Product
Testing and Product Development, Director
of Advanced Research & Development, and Director
of Research, Design & Development for Footwear.
Darcy is also a member of the Board of Directors
of the International Sustainable Development
Foundation.
Previous Monthly Features:
May 2001,
"The Five Steps to Reinventing the World"
(Step 1: Free of...)
June 2001,
"Positive Design Decisions in an Imperfect
Market" (Step 2: Personal Preference)
July 2001,
"Textile Mills Lead Another Revolution"
August 2001,
"Synthetic Materials for Eco-Effective
Design"
September
2001, "Transforming Product Design within
Current Production Systems" (Step 3: The Passive
Positive List)
October 2001,
"Do you know what they want to do now?"
by Tim O'Brien, Director, Ford Environmental
Quality Office
November
2001, "The Breakthrough to True Eco-Effectiveness"
(Step 4: The Active Positive List)
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