The retailer has grown from being the first sneaker store in Sweden to now being a global concept. More on the journey from scratch to the future on our podcast with co-founder Erik Fagerlind here. They’re now teaming up with adidas, launching a new initiative to promote a specific recycling habit that Nordic citizens are quite familiar with.
Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland all use the special ”pant” system (”pantti” in Finnish), which could be described as a recycling scheme on plastic bottles and cans. When you buy something in a container as such, you will also pay a deposit (included in the price) — a deposit you will get back in cash when it’s being brought back to the food store to ”pant”. The scheme has put the Nordic countries in top when it comes to recycling PET bottles and aluminum cans, with around 90% of all the containers are being recycled. In Sweden alone, an astonishing amount of 2.15 billion (2.151 563 342) bottles and cans was recycled in 2019, saving around 180,000 tons of co2.
This is something SNS and adidas have taken hold of and want to encourage. They invite customers to recycle their containers and in return, they will get a 10% discount on a pair of adidas Stan Smith, made out of recycled polyester. Polyester is a plastic material and goes under the name Polyethylene terephthalate, which often is abbreviated PET — the same material as plastic bottles. So when recycling your bottles, you will be able to buy a discounted pair of shoes made out of the same material as what you are recycling.
Circular sustainability in practice.
