Puma unveils eco friendly shoe bag

Puma unveiled its 'clever little bag’, created by industrial designer Yves Béhar, at the Design Museum in London yesterday. At the same time, the company set out a number of new objectives it aims to achieve by 2015 as part of its long-term sustainability plan, dubbed puma.safe.

Puma’s new sustainable shoe packaging is made from recycled plastic and contains a single sheet of folded cardboard. As well as eliminating the need for extra carrier bags, the company said the packaging uses 65 per cent less paper than the traditional cardboard shoebox and cuts carbon emissions by 10 tonnes per year. It also reduces water, energy and diesel consumption on the manufacturing level by more than 60 per cent per year.

"Approximately 8,500 tonnes less paper will be consumed, 20 million Megajoules of electricity saved, one million litres less of fuel oil used and one million litres of water saved," the company said in a statement.

Because of the reduction in material used, the lighter built-in bag also slashes transport costs, saving 500,000 litres of diesel per year.

New packaging design to be rolled out in 2011

Puma, which is also planning to switch plastic and paper shopping bags in Puma stores to sustainable biodegradable bags, said the new packaging and distribution system would be rolled out in the second half of 2011.

The company, which wants to be the leading sustainable sportswear brand in the world, described the eco packaging move as a milestone in its sustainability programme and said it hoped other retail companies would follow suit.

The new packaging underpins the next phase in Puma’s sustainability programme, which the company unveiled yesterday. This includes reducing carbon, energy, water, and waste by 25 per cent by 2015.

Puma launches S-Index standard

Another 2015 target is to ensure 50 per cent of Puma international clothes and footwear collections are manufactured according to a new company benchmark, the Puma S-Index standard, that requires the use of sustainable materials such as organic cotton and recycled polyester, as well as ensuring best practice production processes are employed.

"For a long time our mission has been to become the most desirable sportlifestyle company. With this next phase of our sustainability programme we have evolved our mission to be the most desirable and sustainable sportlifestyle company in the world," said Jochen Zeitz, chairman and ceo of Puma.

As part of its long-term sustainability programme, Puma said it was also working towards the introduction of closed-loop systems and recycling programmes. It plans to make a further announcement on sustainability later this month.