Recycle shoes, clothing, accessories at Puma stores

Schalk Burger brings it back.

The company has installed recycling bins in its stores and outlets for customers to return used shoes, clothing and accessories of any brand. The used products are then sent off to be reused or recycled, depending on their state. Products can be handed on, broken down and reused to create raw materials or recycled into new products. With this new initiative, the company helps to protect the environment, aspiring to eliminate waste by recycling used products to create new ones. This effort is one more step forward toward the long-term goal of transitioning to a closed cycle loop for materials usage.

"As part of our mission to become the most desirable and sustainable company in the world, we are constantly working on solutions that aim at reducing the environmental impact the company leaves behind on our planet," said Franz Koch, CEO of Puma. "With our Bring Me Back-Program, we are pleased to target for the first time ever the massive amounts of waste sport lifestyle products leave behind at their end-of-life phase, when consumers dispose of them and they end up on landfills or in waste incineration plants."

The company has implemented several initiatives and programmes within its long-term sustainability program that foresees a reduction of 25% of carbon emissions, energy, water and waste in its offices, stores, warehouses and direct supplier factories by 2015. With the innovative packaging system, Clever Little Bag, which it introduced in 2010 that replaced traditional shoeboxes, the company already reached a milestone in reducing it and its consumers' environmental footprint significantly by saving more than 60% of paper and water annually.

In 2011, it published the first-ever environmental profit and loss account that assessed and valued the environmental impacts of the company's core operations (offices, stores and warehouses) and along its entire supply chain of production factories - from the level of raw material production to the final manufacturing of products. This analysis helped it to determine the impacts that arise from the point of cotton or leather production to the point where the products are sold in its stores. However, a considerable part of its environmental footprint comes about through the consumer disposal phase. The Bring Me Back program now addresses its impact at that level, reducing the waste generation of sport lifestyle products.

The program furthermore sets the foundation for an initiative on products, which are designed for recycling, as the company is currently looking into solutions to develop recyclable or decomposable products. Its entire team is also working on achieving the company's goal of having 50% of the international collections made of more sustainable materials by 2015. In 2011, about 16% of its total apparel products were made of more sustainable materials such as recycled polyester, organic cotton and Cotton Made in Africa, proving that the company is right on track to reach this target.

'Bring Me Back' launches this week in Johannesburg at the Fourways, Maponya Mall, Retail Crossing, Woodmead, Worldwear, Braamfontein and Palms stores; in Pretoria at the Kolonnade store and in Cape Town at the Canal Walk, Access Park and V&A stores. The programme is launching in a number of its markets worldwide in October, with a full global roll-out slated for January 2013.

For more information, go to www.puma.com/bringmeback.