Nike "Considered Design" Has Reused 82 Million Plastic Bottles

Nike has had a change of heart.

Everyone knows the "just do it" slogan, but Nike has recently begun to take their own advice as it pertains to protecting the environment they so vigilantly promote getting out in. GreenBiz has the details on just how serious Nike is about their Considered Design initiative.

At the State of Green Business Forum in Chicago, Lorrie Vogel, the head of Nike Considered, discussed how the company addresses its biggest sustainability goals and how it hopes to make the next leap forward with help from its partners.

"We want to do more than less bad, what we want to do is create a vision on what does good ultimately look like for Nike," Vogel explained. "For us, it's about creating closed-loop products, taking materials from an old shoe and an old shirt, grinding it up and turning them into a new shoe, a new shirt."

But the company also has big goals on reducing overall material use, on reducing toxics in their products, design products for recyclability, and more. The overarching idea is Nike Considered, an ethos for Nike's operations and products to do more than just less bad, but to do more good.

Nike has been sourcing used plastic bottles to fabricate the recycled polyester they used in the 2010 World Cup jerseys and have built out into other products.

All totaled, Nike has recycled 82 million plastic bottles since the onset of the Considered Design ethos, and it will be interesting to see how the athletics giant furthers that philosophy in the months and years to come.

[Photo: dandooo/Flickr]