Adidas's newest sneaker is a load of garbage—ocean garbage, that is.

 

The sportswear giant has teamed up with Parley for the Oceans, a multidisciplinary band of "creators, thinkers and leaders" who want to make ocean debris a valuable material for the fashion industry, to create the world's first shoe upper made entirely from reclaimed ocean plastic and illegal deep-sea gillnets.

 

The prototype, which was unveiled at the General Assembly at the United Nations in New York City on Monday, offers a "first look" at the kind of consumer-ready ocean-plastic products the partnership has in store, according to Eric Liedtke, head of global brands at Adidas, and Cyrill Gutsch, founder of Parley for the Oceans.

 

Amassing the materials used in the sample wasn’t easy, however. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a Parley partner, retrieved the nets after spending 110 days tracking an illegal poaching vessel to the coast of West Africa. For their trouble, the crew recovered 72 kilometers of gillnetting, or nearly 45 miles worth.

 

Future materials aren’t likely to be as dramatic, however. Liedtke said they’ll turn to easier-to-retrieve sources like fishing nets and beach-combed litter, at least until technology allows for the capture of microplastics and other, more-elusive components.

 

Still, Liedtke called the shoe a “big, bold step” in the fight to protect the planet’s oceans.