Recently, NIKE Inc. released its FY’12-13 Sustainable Business Performance Summary, giving an update against the current business, labour and environmental goals as the company progressively works toward profitable growth from constrained resources. The report outlines the retailer’s success and challenges and shows NIKE making progress across key impact areas of climate and energy, labour, chemistry, water, waste and community.
“NIKE’s success as a growth company is tied directly to our culture of innovation. Today we believe that sustainable innovation that benefits the athlete, the company and the planet will play a key role in the future of our business,” states Mark Parker, President and CEO, NIKE, Inc. This is evident from the company’s progress in cases including absolute reduction of carbon emissions of close to 3 per cent across the whole value chain from its FY’11 baseline, while on the other hand the revenue grew 26 per cent over the same period. Meanwhile, production also grew as the company fulfilled its strategic aim to source from fewer, better-performing contract factories, with a 14 per cent reduction – from 910 to 785 factories over the last two years.
A part from the success the company also faces challenges including the rate at which the market adapts to new ‘Green’ technologies. In addition, NIKE provides a transparent ‘big-picture’ view of the impacts across its entire value chain, from growing and processing materials to a product’s end of life, and the steps of manufacturing, transportation, distribution and selling in-between. The report shows how the company is focusing on innovating in the areas where the greatest impacts of its business lies, including materials and manufacturing. “We believe business has a critical role to play in meeting the challenges of a changing world – addressing climate change, preserving the earth’s constrained resources, enhancing global economic opportunity – not by reducing growth but by redefining it,” adds Mark.
