With the Tokyo 2020 Olympics on the horizon, Nike unveiled its latest product innovations, poised to catapult its athletes to success, in an inspiring showcase staged at The Shed in New York City earlier this week. Centered around creating a better future for sport, the comprehensive presentation unveiled new goods at both the performance and lifestyle levels, ranging from the competition apparel athletes will wear during the 2020 Olympics to new spike, basketball and football shoe designs, boasting new technologies that upend traditional standards.
At the core of everything lies Nike’s mission to unite performance results with a sustainability slant. More so now than ever, athletes are having to train and compete in new conditions due to climate change. Tokyo 2020 is set to be the hottest Olympic Games on record and the new product innovations have been designed with this in mind on variety of levels. For one, the new track and field kits feature Nike Dri-FIT Aeroswift material, which wicks away sweat and disperses it evenly throughout garments for better management of heat and moisture in hotter conditions.
Sustainable materials also feature heavily in Team USA’s medal stand collection, which includes a 100 per-cent recycled polyester jacket cut in a kimono-inspired design that reduces waste, track pants constructed from 100 per-cent recycled nylon and trimmings made from Nike Grind recycled rubber. The uniform is complemented by Nike’s lowest impact trainer, the Vapormax, that is made using 75 per-cent recycled manufacturing waste.
‘We are always looking to make athletes better and make the world a better place,’ says Nike’s Seana Hannah, Vice President for Sustainable Innovation. ‘Nike does a great job of bringing innovation to scale. We’re really looking at our entire carbon footprint and where we can have the most impact. You’ll see that we have used as much recycled material as possible and we have designed out waste in every opportunity. And then we’ve also used waste as a new resource in our new Space Hippie shoes.’
As the brand’s lowest carbon footprint shoe ever, the Space Hippie footwear collection is composed of Nike’s own ‘space junk’ – a myriad of scrap materials found on the factory floor that have been reincorporated in a circular way. In addition to championing a new aesthetic in footwear, Space Hippie’s knitted body also utilizes yarn made from recycled water bottles, T-shirts and yarn scarps. It’s eye-catching foam sole is made from a layer of recycled factory foam offcuts and another layer of ‘crater foam’ made from a blend of standard Nike foams and 15 per-cent Nike Grind recycled rubber.
‘Nike does a great job of bringing innovation to scale. We’re really looking at our entire carbon footprint and where we can have the most impact.’ — Seana Hannah, vice president at Nike
‘Space Hippie product presents itself as an artifact from the future. It’s avant-garde; it’s rebelliously optimistic,’ says John Hoke, Nike Chief Design Officer. ‘Space Hippie is also an idea. It is about figuring out how to make the most with the least material, the least energy and the least carbon. It’s changed the way we look at materials, it’s changed the way that we look at the aesthetics of our product. It’s changed how we approach putting product together.’ §
