Make Way For World’s First ‘Green’ Football Field That Is Made Using 1.8 Million Waste Plastic Bottles

New Delhi: If innovative ideas and solutions are the order of the day to deal with survival issues plaguing the planet, then this one surely makes the cut. Leading sportswear brand ADIDAS has built the world’s first ‘green’ and sustainable football pitch using 1.8 million waste plastic bottles or 40,000 pounds of plastic waste. Traditionally, a turf field is made using a huge quantity of synthetic fibers made to look like natural grass. What ADIDAS did differently was to use waste plastic bottles that were polluting the environment, and reuse them to build a high-school football field.

The green football field has been constructed at Miami’s Edison High school. Sharing details about the initiative on social media, the official Twitter handle of Adidas posted a video and said, “Building for a better tomorrow. Approximately 1.8 million plastic bottles were repurposed and used to build this new home for Miami Edison Senior school.”

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As per the official statement released by the company, plastic bottles have been sourced from remote islands, beaches, coastal communities, and shorelines and were repurposed to build this sustainable football field and is an attempt by the company to reduce plastic waste around the world. The brand has also made a commitment to #EndPlasticWaste through innovation and partnerships and has committed that by 2020 – more than 50% of all the polyester Adidas uses in products will be recycled and by 2024 – Adidas will use only recycled polyester in all Adidas products across the business and make around 20 million shoes from plastic waste.

James Carnes, VP Brand Strategy has been quoted in the official statement,

We’re not just focused on changing how we do business, we are dedicated to changing how our industry does business.

In the past, the brand has sold over 11 million pairs of shoes with recycled materials in 2019, a fraction of the 400 million and more pairs of shoes it distributes each year.

Plastic Waste Crisis

According to the United Nations Environment Programme, around the world, one million plastic drinking water bottles are purchased every minute, while up to 5 trillion pieces of plastic are floating in the world’s oceans, which amount to an area the size of Argentina, as per the study published in a Public Library of Science journal. The world is producing 300 million tonnes of plastic waste every year and that’s nearly equivalent to the weight of the entire human population, states UN environment.

Researchers estimate that more than 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic have been produced since the early 1950s and about 60% of that plastic has ended up in either a landfill or in the natural environment. UN Environment also states that only about 9% of all plastic waste ever produced has been recycled and about 12% has been incinerated. The problem of plastic pollution is so huge that it is taking the lives of nearly one million birds, and 100,000 whales, sharks, seals, dolphins, and turtles every year. Moreover, the experts have warned that if we continue to use plastic at this rate then by 2050 there will be more plastic than fishes in our water bodies.

The need of the hour for everyone – be it individuals or corporates is to take action to beat plastic pollution.