Our society has started to support any business in an endeavor to reduce their environmental impact. People love to feel that they are making a positive difference in the world with each purchase of an environmentally-friendly product, and businesses aren’t exactly upset about making profits from such an effort. Porter, of HBS, claims that “a shared value approach reconnects company success with social progress”. Nike has quite recently made an honest attempt to create shared value in the market for performance wear.
Through the outstanding advancement of their manufacturing technology, Nike have managed to incorporate the usage of recycled plastic bottles into the production of their new lightweight shoe, Flyknit. “Discarded plastic bottles are melted down”, as their website says, in an attempt to “serv[e] the needs of the athlete and the planet at the same time”.
In his blog post, “Successes and Failures of Creating Shared Value”, Tyler Nylander acclaims a recently-released advertisement created by Nike that supports weight loss with the slogan ‘Find Your Greatness’. The company is constantly searching for new ways to support social and environmental causes in alignment with the needs of the business.
The ultimate environmental impact of Nike’s effort is mentioned by Matthew Wheeland in his blog post, “How Nike’s Green Design Recycled 82 Million Plastic Bottles”. Wheeland mentions that each soccer jersey designed by Nike for the South Africa games took “eight plastic bottles out of landfills”.
https://kedelltd.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/recycled-plastic-bottles.jpg
Nike has the capability to expand their utilization of this technology across its entire product line, decorating everything from running shoes to jerseys with recycled material. Perhaps the most significant effect of this initiative, however, will be the response of competitors in the market. If consumers start choosing plastic-bottle-infused products, businesses refusing to hop on the train will be left behind. By taking this step forward, Nike are encouraging others to follow in the reconceiving of the market.
When millions of products in a market are purchased every year, it only takes a slight adjustment of the manufacturing process to reshape the environmental impact of an entire industry. The pursuit of creating shared value could redefine business as we know it, and completely alter society’s relationship with large companies like Nike.
Word Count: 365
References: https://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2011/02/09/how-nikes-green-design-saved-82m-plastic-bottles
https://blogs.ubc.ca/tnylander/
https://hbr.org/2011/01/the-big-idea-creating-shared-value
http://news.nike.com/news/nike-better-world