The Dirty Numbers Behind the Sporting Goods Industry

It's well known that the global sporting goods industry has a massive environmental problem. We prepared a few figures in order to better grasp the dimensions we are dealing with.

It's hard to imagine that sports, arguably the most beautiful pastime in our lives, makes such a dramatic contribution to environmental pollution. So it's best to start with an athlete's individual record.

It would certainly be unfair to measure the footprint of ice hockey players, for example, packed into heavy equipment, competing on costly cooled ice surfaces. Formula1 drivers are certainly not the most grateful of examples either - due to their excessive globetrotting and fuel-burning. So let's start with the arguably "greenest" athletes there are - the runners.

Runner's World magazine once recorded the carbon footprint of a statistically average running enthusiast per year: 3 pairs of running socks (40 kg CO2), 3 pairs of running shoes (215 kg CO2), 2 pairs of running shorts (50 kg CO2), 1 pair of tights (35 kg CO2, 1 running shirt 25 kg CO2), 1 load of washing a week (120 kg CO2). The result is about 485 kg of CO2 that runners emit. And only very few of them compensate responsibly.

Sports brands, as the actual producers of these emissions, also do little to minimize their footprint. Actually, on the contrary. Running and fitness equipment in particular is booming. The big brands are breaking sales record after sales record. 20 billion "sports shoes" are said to be sold annually. At most 3 to 4 % of them, mostly sneakers, can claim to follow some kind of sustainable concept - let's say, at least a recycled upper.

Only very few companies want to clean up after themselves. Especially not the big ones. Proper emission compensations, meaning measures removing at least as much CO2 from the air as one has added oneself, would mean costs in the millions, if not billions. Not to mention how much precious gross margin would be lost if the cheap plastic materials, such as polyester or simple thermoplastics, were replaced with sustainable solutions.

In general, most sports brands like to take the easy road. Although recycled materials are more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly, but somewhat more expensive, to date just over 10% of all plastics in the fashion industry are made from recycled materials.

At the end of their life cycle most plastic products, such as shoes or functional shirts, are either burned or end up on landfills, "preferably" in the poorest countries. And because their infrastructure is often very problematic, this garbage quickly pollutes nature, especially waterways. It takes 200 years or more for a polyester shirt to decompose in the wild - often leaving chemical substances or heavy metals.

But in fact, the pollution of soil and water is not only caused by common waste products. With every wash cycle plastic textiles release tiny microplastics. These cannot be caught by conventional filters and thus end up in rivers, lakes and oceans. It is estimated that 500,000 tonnes of such tiny plastic particles are already floating around in the oceans - unwanted fish food that later also ends up in our digestive system. In average, every human is said to consume 5 g of plastic every week - a credit card.

But these are only the most visible traces of the sporting goods industry. Unfortunately, it is up to the customer to prefer bio-based or recycled materials to conventional fossil-based products and to consider carefully whether a running shoe or a functional shirt really needs to be replaced or whether it can be repaired, donated or otherwise recycled. Maybe we are not doing the big sports brands any favors - but certainly our planet.