Yonex debuts partly recycled sneakers at badminton World Championships

LONDON : As the world's best badminton players travel home after the World Championships in Denmark, the sport's leading manufacturer Yonex told Reuters some of them were fighting it out for the first time in sneakers made partly from recycled materials.

Sports equipment makers like Yonex have seen increasing demand from fans and shareholders alike to invest in sustainable sourcing and ethical production for their products, particularly clothes and shoes.

From Nike's Flyleather products - made by binding at least 50 per cent recycled leather fibres with synthetic fibres using a water-powered process - to Adidas saying 96 per cent of the polyester it uses is recycled, sporting goods makers have in the past decade raced to make sneakers and apparel more sustainable.

In addition to appeasing environmentally conscious shoppers, the companies argue that switching to recycled materials helps reduce waste and their reliance on finite resources.

Yonex - which makes the official tournament shuttlecocks used in all major Badminton World Federation (BWF) events, as well as the Olympic Games - sponsored apparel and equipment for dozens of players at the world championships, including Tokyo 2020 Olympic gold medalists Chen Yu Fei from China and Denmark's Viktor Axelsen.

Yonex said both players had taken to the court for the first time wearing its POWER CUSHION 65 Z C-90 sneakers, which use recycled polyester in about 90 per cent of the upper area's material. The company said it offered the shoes to the athletes and recommended they wear them.

BLENDING MATERIALS

"The functionality of the new shoes is the same as the previous ones made without the sustainable materials," Shinichiro Chiba, head of Yonex's environmental enhancement department,