Sports shoes

New Internationalist, Dec, 2000

STYLE

`Like to flaunt 'em, that's why I bought 'em ... We make a mean team my Adidas and me.'

sang Run DMC at the height of the sports-shoe craze of the 1980s.

* Basketballer Chuck Taylor was the first celebrity used to market sports shoes in the 1920s. Since then his signature, as part of the Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars logo, has graced 550 million pairs sold worldwide.

* In the 1990s, Michael Jordan received $20 million a year to endorse Nike. Currently, Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo receives about $1.5 million a year to wear Nike gear.(1)

* An upstart in the 1960s, Nike is now the number-one sports-shoe producer, selling $9.2 billion-worth of shoes a year.(1)

* Eighty per cent of Nikes are not used for any athletic activity.(1)

* Nike's famous swoosh logo was created in 1971. A student, for a fee of $35, designed one of the most recognizable corporate logos worldwide.(2)

CONSUMER GUIDE

Key: ** = middle rating   * = poor rating

           ENVIRON-               OPPRES-
           MENTAL      ANIMAL     SIVE       WORKER'S   CODE OF
BRAND      REPORTING   RIGHTS     REGIMES    RIGHTS     CONDUCT

Adidas                 **         *          *          **
Ellesse    **          **         **         *          **
Fila       *           **         **         **         *

New

 Balance   *                      *          **         *
Nike       *           **         *          *          **
Puma       *           **         **         *          **
Reebok     *           **         **         *          **
Umbro      *           **         **         **         *

Source: Ethical Consumer. For more consumer guides see

www.ethicalconsumer.org

SUBSTANCE

Your sports shoe is made up of dozens of different, mostly synthetic, materials.(3)

Upper: leather, tanned via a 20-step process using strong chemicals. Chemicals from tanneries in South Korea are discharged into the Nattong River along with other industrial pollutants, making tap water undrinkable.

Midsole: includes custom-designed EVA (ethylene vinyl acetate) foam -- a composite of several chemicals which when combined and baked release tiny air bubbles, giving the shoes their cushy feel.

Below the heel: is a small amber-coloured polyurethane bag filled with a pressurized gas. According to a UN report on global warming, pressurized sulphur hexafluoride gas in the trademark bubbles in Nike's Air shoe is a global-warming agent 22,000 times more damaging than carbon dioxide.

Outer soles: styrene-butadiene rubber, synthesized from petroleum and local benzene.

SLAVES TO FASHION

`There shall be no discrimination based on race, creed, gender, marital or maternity status, religious or political beliefs, age or sexual orientation.'

NIKE'S CODE OF CONDUCT(2)

Advertisement for a Chinese factory producing shoes for Nike and Adidas(4):

BALANCING THE BOOKS(5)

Salary of a Nike contract worker in Indonesia: $2.60 a day

Number of years needed for Nike contract worker to make the same as Nike CEO Phil Knight earns in one year: 98,644

Percentage of Nike's marketing expenditure required to ensure all Indonesian workers receive a living wage: 4%

Reebok's international sales in 1999: $1.197 billion

Reebok's annual marketing budget: $435 million

Percentage of marketing spend needed to double the wages of 40,000 workers making shoes in Philippines and China: 10%

REQUIREMENTS

Gender: Female

Age: 17-21

Qualifications: Junior secondary or above No colour blind or disability. Wages at piece rate.

ACTION Log onto

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/5232/links.html

to find your nearest anti-Nike or anti-sweatshop campaigning group.

(1) Colours No 36. (2) www.nikebiz.com (3) John C Ryan & Alan Thein Durning Stuff: the Secret Lives of Everyday Things (Northeast Environment Watch, 1997). (4) Nike Campaign. (5) Christian Aid.