Nike Impact Report - Packaging Waste

We will reduce the impact of packaging.

While packaging is needed to support the protection of manufacturing input materials/components and finished product throughout our extensive supply chain, we will continue to look for ways to reduce its impacts. We have analyzed our footwear, apparel, and accessory packaging systems to identify the areas of reduction, ways to use less material (i.e., lighter weight packaging, reusable packaging, etc.) or alternative structures. 

In footwear, we will switch from single-use to reusable cartons and bags for shipping input materials and components to factories, and lightweight our Master Outer Cartons (i.e., the boxes that ship multiple shoe boxes from factory to distribution centers) and tissue paper used to wrap shoes. Balancing the need to protect product and reducing waste, we aim to use toe stuffing only where it is absolutely needed. We will optimize specialty shoe packaging leveraging the best materials so that all aspects of the shoe box can be recycled. We will also make sure our shoe boxes are sized the best with each shoe size, reducing the amount of unused space in the shoe box. We will continue to expand the opportunity to leverage our SIOC (ships in own container) shoe box, as introduced with Space Hippie in FY20. In apparel and accessories, we will also light weight our master outer cartons. We continue to optimize our hangtag system, using more sustainable materials and optimizing size. Finally, we will explore ways to optimize the various packaging elements used in products such as gym bags, gloves, and shin guards.

In addition, through NIKE’s participation in the Fashion Pact,117 a global coalition of companies in the fashion and textile industry committed to a common set of environmental goals, we are on track to eliminate plastic bags in our retail stores by the end of calendar year 2021. We have also launched an initiative to explore alternative materials or solutions to current plastic polybags.

The majority of NIKE’s packaging in footwear is produced with over 90% recycled content. Our 2025 target is important as it leverages the previous success in increasing the recycled content to now focus on using less. Multiple projects have been initiated to achieve our goal of reduced packaging.

Key packaging highlights from FY21 include:

• NIKE has initiated a project to introduce two new sizes of shoeboxes used, improving the fit of the shoes within the carton. We utilized over 27 million of the improved fit shoe cartons in FY21, resulting in
  a reduction of 735,000 kg of corrugate waste shipped from suppliers
  in the first year of the transition. NIKE is also reducing the amount of toe stuffing used in our shoes and, in FY21, removed 2,232,176 kg of toe stuffing material from our packaging.

• NIKE is also reducing the weight of the shipping cartons utilized to ship product globally from footwear suppliers by 24%. In FY21, lighter weight footwear cartons reduced the shipping carton weight
  by 770,000 kg in the first year of the transition.

• As a signatory to The Fashion Pact, NIKE is also working to eliminate single-use plastics in our packaging by 2030. By December 2021, we had successfully eliminated plastic shoppers in our retail stores. We are teaming with other industry leaders to research options

  to replace apparel polybags with a more sustainable, non-plastic alternative. We are also working to eliminate plastic packaging for our digital shipments with a paper alternative and are making great progress across our geographies, with our European Logistics Campus 100% converted.

• We are phasing out all dunnage (both plastic and paper) in our distribution centers for the majority of our products. Dunnage is the filler material intended to protect the product from damage in transit. At the end of FY21, 84% of our distribution centers used zero dunnage.