From upcycling to generating electricity from potatoes, PUMA puts two footballers and a fashionista to the test to see who will earn the most green flags.

Each week, PUMA’s Voices of a RE:GENERATION will present this trio with playful sustainability challenges, aiming to inspire and educate listeners on how everyday choices impact climate change. The challenges showcase how even small changes can make a big difference in reducing our environmental footprint. Whoever is most successful each week wins a green flag - so get ready for some friendly competition!    

"I’m so excited to be a part of this podcast which brings sustainability to the forefront of Gen Z listeners. It’s a lot of fun to complete the sustainability challenges and learn more about the small changes we can all make to fight climate change."- Maya Le Tissier

Anne-Laure Descours, Chief Sourcing Officer at PUMA, said: “The Climate crisis can seem overwhelming, however all of us have the power to make better decisions for the future of our planet, no matter how small. It’s vital that we travel this journey towards a FOREVER. BETTER. together with our next generation to create awareness and inspire collective change.”  

Upcoming episodes include:

Episode 1, The Carbon Crunch - Ever wondered how your breakfast affects the planet? Or how many carbon emissions are released on your morning commute? Our hosts dive into the surprising truth behind greenhouse gas emissions. Available now to watch below.  

Episode 2, The Wardrobe Revival – A little care goes a long way. Repairing, reviving, and revamping an old fit or pair of kicks. Find out who can save their item from becoming trash and bring it back to life, while learning about sustainable fashion hacks to reduce waste.

Episode 3, Lessons in Leather – Understanding the environmental impact of different materials can be confusing. Our hosts dive into this debate and uncover that when it comes to sustainability, the answer is far from black and white.  

Episode 4, The Renewable Electricity Experiment – The importance of transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Our hosts compete to see who can generate the most electricity using unconventional methods.  

Episode 5, The RE:FIBRE Makeover – Our trio showcase their upcycled outfits, made from materials that would otherwise be considered waste – while learning about the magic behind circular textile production with PUMA RE:FIBRE. Lastly, the winner of the Green Flags Challenge is crowned.

Green Flags speaks to PUMA's commitment to increase transparency and engage the next generation in their efforts to become more sustainable. Following on from PUMA’s 10FOR25 targets announced in 2019, PUMA has recently announced their new Vision 2030 sustainability targets in Human Rights, Circularity and Climate, setting out how the brand will continue to reduce their impact.  

Subscribe, listen and watch Green Flags by PUMA on Apple, Spotify, PUMA YouTube and all major podcast platforms.  

Watch episode 1 here:

For more information, please visit: https://foreverbetter.com/en/forever-better-podcast/green-flags 

Out of hundreds of companies examined, PUMA was amongst 11 in 2024 to be ranked in the fourth and highest “Leading” tier. Companies with this distinction showed an integrated materials strategy aligned with global goals, disclosed climate goals and targets and made progress towards a circular use of materials, Textile Exchange said. This year’s result is one step up from PUMA’s inclusion in the second-highest “Scaling” tier in 2023.

“We know how important our choice of product materials is, when we want to reduce our carbon footprint and lessen our environmental impact,” said Anne Laure Descours, PUMA’s Chief Sourcing Officer. “We are very happy to be ranked as ‘Leading’ in this years’ index and we will take it as an opportunity to further strengthen our materials strategy.”

PUMA has a 2025 target of making 9 out of 10 products with materials that are classified as preferred fibres by Textile Exchange or which originate from certified sources. In 2023, this was already the case for 8 out of 10 products. In 2023, 99.7% of all leather was sourced from Leather Working Group-certified tanneries and 99.2% of all cotton was certified or recycled as was 99.4% of all paper and cardboard packaging.  

Almost 65% of the polyester used for PUMA’s apparel and accessories in 2023 came from recycled materials and the company also started to scale up the use of recycled cotton. In 2024 PUMA announced that millions of football jerseys had been made with textile waste through its RE:FIBRE recycling initiative.

The Material Change Index is the largest peer-to-peer comparison initiative in the industry and aims to help track the sector’s progress in fibre and materials sourcing, strategy and the circular transition. The aim of the organization is to help the fashion industry achieve a 45% reduction in greenhouse gases from raw material production by 2030. 

For more detailed information on the Vision 2030 targets, please click here.
 

There’s only one Forever. Let’s make it Better. 

Launched in 2021, the Laureus Sport for Good Index celebrates brands that, through collaboration, innovation and creativity, are making significant contributions across the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as aligning their business output with their sports investments and activations.

The Index shines a light on organizations that are having the clearest and most meaningful impact, and to provide compelling evidence for the role that sport can play in driving sustainable change. The brands feature in the Index for their best-in-class sport for good campaigns and purpose-led initiatives implemented over the past 18 months.

Astin Ewington, Head of Partnerships, Laureus: “We are thrilled to unveil the 2024 Laureus Sport for Good Index, which continues to showcase the immense potential of sport as a force for positive change. The brands featured this year are leading the way in addressing some of the world’s most pressing social and ecological challenges through innovative, purpose-driven initiatives. By highlighting their efforts, we hope to inspire more companies to leverage sport as a platform to create meaningful impact and contribute to a more equitable and sustainable future.” 

PUMA initiatives recognized by the Index include:

VOICES OF A RE:GENERATION - After research which found that young people want brands to make more sustainability commitments, better communicate their goals and be more transparent, PUMA launched their Voices of a RE:GENERATION initiative. The initiative saw the company engage four young sustainability advocates who not only produce social content that helps raise awareness of PUMA’s sustainability targets among younger consumers, but also actively feedback to the brand about how it can improve its ‘FOREVER. BETTER’ sustainability practices.

Meanwhile, PUMA’s ‘RE:FIBRE’ polyester textile-to-textile recycling programme aims to reduce textile waste and make the company less reliant on plastic bottles for recycled polyester. All told, 46,000 RE:FIBRE garments were produced in 2023. Then, from the start of the 2024/25 soccer season, PUMA announced the scaling up of the programme, with millions of PUMA replica soccer jerseys made using RE: FIBRE, further spotlighting a more circular business model for jersey manufacturing.

This year, PUMA also launched an experimental commercial version of its RE:SUEDE sneaker in Europe. Leading up to this, as part of a two-year pilot project experiment that concluded in 2023, PUMA showed it was able to successfully turn the RE:SUEDE into compost under tailor-made industrial composting conditions. The RE:SUEDE can be sent back to PUMA at end of life who send them on to partners in the Netherlands for composting.  

The Index can be viewed and downloaded in full at laureussportforgoodindex.com 

Stitch + Spice, a short film by Luke Jaque-Rodney, one of PUMA's Voices of a RE:GENERATION has been officially selected for Documentary Short at the 6th Big Syn International Film Festival in London.  

Voices of a RE:GENERATION is a PUMA initiative highlighting young changemakers driving positive change in their communities. Through this platform, PUMA aims to inspire the next generation to support a more sustainable future and forms part of the brand’s wider missions to communicate sustainability in a transparent and digestible way. Stitch + Spice is a short documentary captured at PUMA's supplier factories in Vietnam and Bangladesh featuring Luke, a food and nutrition vlogger, who shares meals and engages with garment workers, showcasing their lives, perspectives and cultures. Earlier this year Stitch & Spice was nominated for best sustainability fashion film at the London Fashion Film Festival and received a 2024 Impact Docs Merit Award.

The Big Syn online festival screening which took place from 17-26 October featured nearly 150 films reaching over 45 million people in 120 countries led by a Grand Jury of OSCAR, BAFTA and EMMY award-winners and leaders from the United Nations, House of Lords, as well as sustainability, policy and media stalwarts.  

Festival founders, Dr Ragini G Roy and Dr Sourav Roy, commented "The festival features films from student filmmakers to ones from global legends such as OSCAR winners Sir Ian McKellen (X Men, Lord of the Rings) and Sir David Mark Rylance (Spielberg's The BFG) amongst others; documentaries from acclaimed EMMY and BAFTA winning filmmakers."

Winners will be declared on 8th November at the red-carpet gala awards ceremony at Curzon Soho and all the winners will be featured on Europe's biggest screen, London's Piccadilly Lights on 14th November 2024.   

Sports company PUMA is part of the multi-brand consortium which unveiled the world’s first piece of clothing made entirely from textile waste by using a new biorecycling technology developed by French company CARBIOS.

The project created a plain white T-shirt, which was made from mixed and colored textile waste. By using CARBIOS’ biorecycling technology, the polyester was broken down using enzymes into its fundamental building blocks to produce biorecycled polyester. The quality of the recycled textiles is on par with oil-based virgin polyester.

“PUMA’s wish is to have 100% of our polyester coming from textile waste. Today’s announcement is an important milestone towards achieving this and making our industry more circular,” said Anne-Laure Descours, Chief Sourcing Officer at PUMA. “We now need to work together to make sure we can scale up this technology to make the largest possible impact. We’re excited to be part of this breakthrough and setting new standards for fibre-to-fibre recycling.”

The aim of the consortium is to collectively advance the textile industry's shift towards a circular economy by developing and industrializing CARBIOS’ enzymatic depolymerization technology to achieve 100% “fibre-to-fibre” recycling. By doing so, petroleum can be replaced by textile waste as a raw material to produce polyester textiles. These textiles can once again become raw materials, thus fueling a circular economy with the added benefit of a lower carbon footprint and the avoidance of waste that ends up in landfills or incinerators.  

“It may look like an ordinary t-shirt, but make no mistake, the technology behind it is extraordinary,” said CARBIOS CEO Emmanuel Ladent. “To achieve “fibre-to-fibre” recycling is a technological feat.  CARBIOS couldn’t have done it alone, so thanks to the collaboration with our consortium partners, we have overcome many technical hurdles together to produce the world’s first enzymatically recycled t-shirt made entirely from biorecycled fibres.”

Currently, the majority of recycled polyester in the industry is made from PET bottles, and only 1% of fibres are recycled into new fibres. The collective achievement marks an important milestone for the consortium’s ultimate aim of demonstrating a closed fibre-to-fibre loop using CARBIOS’ biorecycling process at an industrial scale.  

In response to growing consumer demand for greater transparency from the fashion industry, PUMA launches #KnowYourStuff, an educational content series which delves into one of today’s most debated fashion topics - leather vs vegan leather – and the environmental impact of both.

Created in collaboration with Aishwarya Sharma, one of PUMA’s ‘Voices’ and Global Goals Ambassador, #KnowYourStuff translates the complexities and progressions around the use of leather and its alternatives. Available to view on PUMA YouTube and Aishwarya’s Instagram platform from today, the seven episode story will roll out over the next two weeks.  

"By openly discussing the complexities of the materials used in our products, like leather and its alternatives, we hope to foster a more informed and balanced conversation about sustainable clothing and footwear choices, which is essential for driving positive change,”  said Anne-Laure Descours, Chief Sourcing Officer at PUMA. “The #KnowYourStuff series is a testament to our commitment of transparency and our promise made during our Conference of the People event to include the next generation as part of these important discussions." 

#KnowYourStuff forms part of PUMA’s commitment and actions for greater transparency in sustainability, in which Aishwarya is one of four Voices of a RE:GENERATION enlisted by PUMA to help translate sustainability in a way that engages the next generation.  

"My goal with #KnowYourStuff is to educate and empower my audience and young people worldwide,” said Aishwarya Sharma. “Sustainability can be complex and the leather topic is embedded with sensitive themes, so I’ve taken care in making sure this is approached in an open and transparent way that inspires people to become informed about the materials they choose to wear.”

From visiting the PUMA Archive to witnessing behind the scenes leather processing first-hand in Thailand, Aishwarya 

reports back on her fact-finding mission, encouraging audiences to #KnowYourStuff. Along her journey, Aishwarya navigates different perspectives surrounding leather with guests, including leading PUMA stakeholders and PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Key conversations include animal welfare and the use of leather as a byproduct of the beef industry, cattle farming and concerns around deforestation, the leather tanning process, new material innovations and industry challenges.

While PUMA has a long history with leather, dating back to the 1950s, today, leather accounts for only approximately 4% of its footwear materials. PUMA’s 10For25 targets include sourcing 100% leather from certified sources and today the brand works with third parties, such as Leather Working Group, to ensure all leather is sourced from certified tanneries. Additionally, PUMA consults animal protection organisations on a regular basis to review its animal welfare policy and actions.  

Watch the first episode of #KnowYourStuff below or visit our webpage.

The FT awarded the best scores to businesses which achieved the greatest reduction in their direct greenhouse gas emissions and indirect emissions from purchased energy (Scope 1 and 2). It gave more points to those companies which also reported on their indirect emissions from the supply chain (Scope 3) and which worked with external organisations such as CDP and the Science Based Targets Initiative.

“We are humbled to be recognized in this prestigious ranking and I want to thank our team of experts for the hard work they put in around the world to make this possible”, said Anne-Laure Descours, Chief Sourcing Officer at PUMA. “There is still a long way ahead of us in reducing our emissions, especially in the supply chain, where most of our greenhouse gas emissions occur. This will require a concerted effort by all stakeholders.”

PUMA has been included on the Europe’s Climate Leaders ranking since its inception in 2021, but this year, PUMA climbed to its best position of eighth place among all companies analysed.

In 2023, PUMA achieved its prior climate goals seven years early and established new greenhouse gas reduction targets, which were approved by the Science-Based Target initiative (SBTi). By 2030, PUMA aims to lower its Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 90% and its Scope 3 emissions by 33% from a 2017 baseline.

PUMA was able to make significant progress in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions as its core suppliers doubled their use of renewable energy in 2023 compared to the previous year and the company increasingly used materials with a smaller carbon footprint in its products. PUMA also made use of low carbon shipment tariffs as well as renewable electricity or renewable energy certificates at its own operations and it invested in electric vehicles in its car fleet.

The report evaluated what brands publicly self-disclose about their decarbonization efforts in their own operations and supply chain. Fashion Revolution awarded scores across five sections including accountability, decarbonization, energy procurement, financing decarbonization as well as just transition and advocacy. 

PUMA received an overall score of 75%, making it the company with the highest overall score. The report warns that the fashion industry as a whole is lagging significantly in achieving climate targets and reducing emissions.

“While we feel honoured that Fashion Revolution has ranked us as the best performer among the companies it examined, we know there is still a lot of work to do in our decarbonization journey,” said Anne-Laure Descours, Chief Sourcing Officer at PUMA. “We believe that the report should also be seen as a wakeup call. Much more needs to be done to get all stakeholders to work together to descarbonize our industry and our supply chains. We need to come together to find the solutions needed to achieve our climate goals.”

In 2023, PUMA set itself new greenhouse gas reduction targets, which were approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), after the company had reached its previous goals seven years ahead of schedule. By 2030, PUMA seeks to cut its absolute Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 90% from a 2017 baseline year and also committed to reduce absolute Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions from its supply chain and logistics by 33% compared to 2017. 

For more information, please visit www.foreverbetter.com 

The upscaling builds on the 46,000 RE:FIBRE jerseys produced in 2023 and seeks to not only reduce textile waste, but also to create less reliance on plastic bottles to produce recycled polyester products. To make the upscaling possible, PUMA is exploring diversified ways to recycle polyester – such as thermo-mechanical and chemical recycling techniques enabling PUMA to significantly increase its capacity to recycle textile waste.

“RE:FIBRE gives football fans a tangible example of how PUMA is working towards creating a Forever Better,” said Anne-Laure Descours, Chief Sourcing Officer at PUMA. “Our wish is to have 100% of our polyester products created from textile waste. Rethinking how we produce and moving towards a more circular business model is important and RE: FIBRE is central to that.”
 

To celebrate this milestone, PUMA will hold a weekend of activities in the New York flagship store, timed to coincide with the launch of the AC Milan and Manchester City home replica kits and ahead of the two PUMA football teams playing in New York City.  Fans of PUMA, AC Milan and Manchester City are welcome to get involved and celebrate PUMA’s RE:FIBRE journey in store.

Saturday 20th July 2024
One hundred limited edition badges upcycled from match worn jerseys by Jack Grealish and Christian Pulisic will be up for grabs in-store. The badges have been designed by US upcycler and PUMA Voice of a RE:Generation Andrew Burgess, to commemorate the expansion of PUMA RE:FIBRE.

Sunday 21st July
Andrew Burgess will host three upcycling workshops to educate fashion-curious consumers on the techniques for customising and upcycling clothing to extend their lifespan. Leaning into the crossover between sport and fashion, consumers will have the chance to take a RE:FIBRE t-shirt and turn it into a sportstyle inspired garment.
 

More information on this can be found here.