Puma is making it easier for customers to recycle their old handbags, footwear, and sports appeal items. The firm has just installed recycling bins in selected German stores, and it’s planning to roll them out to boutiques around the globe.
The Bring Me Back initiative was developed in collaboration with global recycling company I:CO. Customers simply need to drop their items into the store bins. In an altruistic gesture, Puma’s decided to accept any accessories and apparel items, regardless of their brand.
All donated items are sorted and awarded an I:CO grade. An old pair of jeans might become home or car insulation, while worn trainers may have a new life as part of a race track. Whether the goods are reused, upcycled, and repurposed, they’re saved from languishing unwanted in a wardrobe or in landfill.
Puma chief executive officer Franz Koch says his firm is constantly working on ways to make the business greener.
“With our Bring Me Back program, we are pleased to target for the first time ever the massive amounts of waste sports-lifestyle products leave behind at their end-of-life phase when consumers dispose them and they end up on landfills or in waste incineration plants,” he explained.
The Bring Me Back bins are currently installed in a variety of Puma stores in Germany, including outlets in Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, and Dusseldorf. The program will roll out to other world markets in October 2012 before a complete global launch next January.
