Adidas Creates Sneakers Made From Ocean Trash and Poacher’s Fishing Nets

On June 29, Adidas announced their new partnership with Parley for the Oceans, an organization dedicated to ocean conservation, to create a line of concept sneakers made from plastic waste and fishing nets found in the ocean.

Plastic waste is undoubtedly harmful to all ocean life and studies routinely show that levels of plastic in the ocean are on the rise, but some of the waste used in the production of Adidas’s sneakers came from even more interesting sources.

In April, Sea Shepherd, an oceanic environmental activist organization, confiscated 72km of illegal gillnets from poachers wanted by Interpol after tracking them off the coast of West Africa for 110 days, even saving them when their boat began to sink. Sea Shepherd then donated those plastic nets to the production of Adidas’s new sneakers.

The upper part of the shoes were produced using recycled plastics and green net fibers while the base is made from other sustainably created materials.

It has not been decided yet if Adidas will use the concept designs to produce a full line of recycled ocean trash sneakers, but Adidas plans to start using all recycled fibers for their shoes by 2016.