When you enter the adidas office, you cannot miss the sign at the front door “We commit for a plastic-free office”. Since they moved their office in October 2017 to the Deutsches Haus, adidas has banned single-used plastic inside their office and has kept up their efforts to raise awareness about sustainability among their staff.

The choice of their new location is not insignificant. The Deutsches Haus is the most energy-efficient green premium office building in Vietnam and one of the three building in Asia that is granted -certificates “USGBC LEED Platinum” and “DGNB Gold”, two high certificates that requires certain criteria of sustainability, as minimizing energy consumption for example.
For the adidas, to include sustainability in their way of working is viewed as a responsibility for their company to protect the environment. They gave themselves 3 missions: build a sustainability minded culture in their office, driving sustainability awareness for employees and creating sustainability guidelines. In collaboration with Parley, adidas designed and produced millions of pairs of sneakers from plastic waste from the oceans. For a pair of sneakers, they recycle 11 plastic bottles! Furthermore, adidas CEO, Kasper Rorsted, asked to every subsidiary to ban plastic bottles from their office: “Let’s take the next step and abandon plastic from all of our offices globally, I call on colleagues in all locations to come up with solutions. This is not for consultants to figure out, this one is on us. Remember: it is our obligation to do business in a responsible and sustainable way”.
In adidas Vietnam office, they did not limit themselves to just that and became an entire plastic-free office by banning every single-use plastic from the office: plastic bottles, plastic bags, plastic cups, plastic food containers… They also decided to save energy, water and paper. Paper consumption was to reduce by 20% by setting 2-sided printing as default for office printers and raising awareness about paper waste. They settled a programable electric timer to auto switch off office lights at 7 pm. By avoiding running tap while washing, ensuring their taps to be leak free and raising awareness of water conservation, they planned to reduce water and power consumption by 15%. They also set-up centralized garbage bins replacing individual employee bins, saving more than 15,000 plastic bags a year, use re-usable bags for all outsourcing office purchasing and for first production shoes…

Every office corner and every item used in the office has been rethought to reduce the use of plastic. Glasses were specially designed and printed with a raise awareness sentence and are used by the employees as well as the visitors as mugs. Plastic water fountains were replaced by glass and metal fountains. A green wall of plants brings a touch of freshness and nature in the heart of the office. And furthermore, do you see the blue fabric of sofa, stools and work station partition? They are made at the left-over footwear production material.

Actions are also organized to directly sensitize the employees. They all together sign their commitment against plastic on a board hung in the center of the office and everyone -receives a glass reusable water container. The office also regulary organized events to enhance sustainability and to raise awareness among their staff.

They are a great example to all of us.

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