Did you know it takes 30 litres of water to dye one t-shirt? Multiply that by the thousands of t-shirts that Nike creates each day. That’s a lot of water. But with the increasing concerns of climate change, companies in every industry are making changes to be more sustainable. In order to do this, companies have started to engage in partnerships to find ways to help reduce their impact. Many of these partnerships are coalitions within industries to collaborate ideas of how their industry can be more sustainable. These coalitions, such as the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, will eventually create a competitive advantage for the companies involved. However, some companies are going one step further and are creating cross-industry partnerships.

DyeCoo is a company which contributes to a sustainable environment in terms of water consumption, energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions and waste disposal. With Nike, they have created a ColorDry technology which dyes fabric with zero water in addition to reducing energy usage and increasing efficiency. This technology also allows for the shirts to draw sweat away from the body through a fabric where it can quickly evaporate. These shirts are made from 100% recycled polyester and polyester manufacturing scraps and recycled plastic bottles. The creation of each shirt requires the equivalent of 9 recycled plastic bottles and since 2010, Nike has diverted more than 2 million bottles from landfills.

This technology allows Nike to close the loop and to use waste for other purposes, participating in downcycling. This follows some of the strategies for sustainable product development of water-efficient and recycled content. In addition, Nike has followed some of McKinsey & Company’s seven principles of success when creating partnerships for sustainability. They have identified clear reasons to collaborate and gotten professional help. Through the need of reducing their water footprint, Nike got professional help from DyeCoo in order to use their technology. If more companies participate in these cross-industry partnerships, we can hopefully reduce our environmental impact!