Puma drops unfair leather comparison as new shoe l - footwearbiz: Lead

News

Puma drops unfair leather comparison as new shoe launches

14/02/2013
In keeping with statements it made in October last year, sports brand Puma launched a new shoe called the InCycle Basket on February 12. However, its launch announcements included none of the controversial “environmental cost” comparisons with leather that the company made when it began talking about the new product.

It has subjected the shoe to analysis by the Cradle to Cradle movement, which aims to encourage consumer product manufacturers to use materials that can be recycled or that are biodegradable. The shoe, and a range of athletic clothing with which it makes up the InCycle collection, have won Cradle to Cradle certification. Upper materials Puma has used in the InCycle Basket include organic cotton and linen. The sole is composed of a new biodegradable plastic called APINATbio, which can be shredded into its component materials and composted to go back into the ecosystem.

Puma said at the time of the commercial launch that InCycle products represent “a tremendous step forward in reducing our environmental footprint and giving consumers a more sustainable product choice”.

At a media event to introduce the shoe in October 2012, the company published a comparison between the InCycle Basket and the popular Puma Suede shoe, which a consultancy in London had carried out for it. The aim of the exercise was to show the “environmental cost” of the two products, taking into account water-, energy- and land-use, and carbon emissions. The analysis appeared to suggest that the “environmental cost” of the suede used in the older Puma shoe would make the cost to the environment of each hide used to make the Puma Suede shoe substantially higher than the market value of the hide itself.

Questioned by World Leather magazine over several months about this conundrum, neither Puma nor the consultancy it worked with were able to justify the figures.

At the time of the commercial launch in February of the InCycle Basket, Puma made no mention of this comparison or of the analysis it had commissioned. One of the brand’s directors, Reiner Hengstmann, limited himself to saying InCycle products impacted the environment “by a third less than their conventional counterparts”, without going into any further detail.

Puma’s InCycle collection will become available in its stores from March 2013.



Related stories:

Reebok clarifies ‘compostable’ shoe claim to footwearbiz 12/07/2017

footwearbiz.com cannot be held responsible for content if the language setting is changed from English.

The translations provided by Google Translate are automated and therefore might not be accurate and may contain incorrect, offensive or misleading language. We offer this facility as a guide only.