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MANUFACTURING & MATERIALS INNOVATION
17
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2012 | www.footwearbiz.com
O
n the back of in-house
research that highlights the
environmental benefits of a
new range of products, the
outgoing executive chairman of Puma
has called for governments to reduce
the “antiquated” import duties on
synthetic materials to help make these
more competitive compared to leather.
Jochen Zeitz said the results of new
analysis that compares a new
biodegradable shoe (made from
materials including organic cotton and
linen) and a traditional Puma Suede
athletic shoe, “dramatically demon-
strate that we have to steadily increase
the share of sustainable materials in our
collections so that we mitigate not only
Puma’s but also our consumers’
environmental footprint”. The cotton
and linen shoes are part of a new
collection, InCycle, which Puma will
launch in February.
The implication of this is that Puma
does not regard leather as a sustainable
material, which flies in the face of
millennia of human experience,
scientific research and also of the
sustainability strategy of Puma’s parent
group, PPR. PPR’s support of leather
remains strong, even if Puma’s action
plan appears to include eliminating
leather as much as possible.
At the end of June, Jochen Zeitz told
the
Financial Times
: “We should eat less
meat, all of us, and we should use less
leather. We all know that cattle and beef
are among the biggest contributors to
carbon emissions. We have to find
alternative ways of producing our raw
materials without asking nature to do it
for us.”
Anyone who sees a disconnect
between these comments and the
stated strategy of PPR will not have
been surprised to learn on October 15
that Jochen Zeitz had announced his
resignation as chairman of the
administrative board of Puma. He will
step down on November 30.
With the help of London-based
consultancy Trucost, Puma has
calculated that the “environmental cost”
of a pair of Suede is
€
4.29, whereas the
environmental cost of the InCycle
Basket is
€
2.95. The only breakdown
Puma has offered is to outline the
contribution it has calculated for
greenhouse gas emissions, air
pollution, water use, land use and
waste. The figures for the Puma Suede
are, respectively (and in euro), 2.16,
0.74, 0.61, 0.48 and 0.30. The
corresponding figures for the InCycle
Basket are 1.41, 0.84, 0.49, 0.09 and
0.12. The figures are for the whole shoe,
not just the uppers.
We have been in dialogue with Puma
and Trucost since they released this
information because we believe the
figure for the Suede shoe is too high.
Our suggestion as to why the number is
so high is that, maybe, the Trucost
formula failed to take into account that
suede is only a part of the material a
hide will yield and that the contribution
of the suede that goes into a pair of the
Suede shoes needs to be shared with a
corresponding area of grain leather
from the same hide. It’s an opinion, not
a statement of fact. Trucost and Puma
insist it’s incorrect, and say that the
figures they have run take into account
all stages of the leather supply chain
and that their lifecycle analysis uses
“robust and comprehensive” factors.
We are perplexed. If the grotesquely
high figure of
€
4.29 really does
correspond to the environmental cost of
the material for one pair of Puma Suede
containing, at most, 2.5 square-feet of
suede,
what
would
be
the
environmental cost of the hide from
which those 2.5 square-feet of suede
came? A hide from an average-sized
North American hide will yield about 48
square-feet of leather. All things being
equal, this would give you enough to
make 19.2 pairs of shoes (we have
calculated on a European size 42). But
that would be for the grain side alone.
We accept that on the split side, when it
comes to making suede, there would
probably be more waste and that 19.2
pairs of suede shoes would be unlikely.
If we halve it, that would give us 9.6
pairs. The total for the hide would be
28.8 pairs of shoes. To calculate the
environmental cost of the hide using the
Puma-Trucost methodology, we need to
know what proportion of the
€
4.29 they
ascribe to the upper. At the time of
going to press, they have not been able
to tell us. If it’s 60% or more, which
seems likely, the environmental cost of
the hide will be greater than the value of
one of these North American hides on
the open market in October 2012.
The dialogue continues and we are
still trying to understand how the
figures can be so high. Trucost and
Puma feel their methodology is sound
but their explanations so far are not and
have left us scratching our heads.
Perplexed by Puma
Our focus in this issue on sustainability makes it imperative for us to consider recent
comments from one of the world’s most prominent athletic footwear brands, Puma,
on the environmental impact of its shoes. The main article we offer is the result of
our analysis of comments the brand made earlier in 2012. However, a new
announcement from the company at the start of October means that the article
requires a more up-to-date context, which we attempt to give here.