Alice Hartley is becoming a member of Nike as its new director of waste and circularity, after a dozen years of comparable management roles at Hole Inc. and Underneath Armour. The rent displays a strategic focus by the sneaker colossus to embed circularity throughout the group. Hartley will serve with a comparatively new CEO and chief sustainability officer as Nike strikes ahead from drastic cuts to its sustainability employees by earlier management in December 2023.
“This clears an area for Hartley to overview the scenario afresh and construct on the intensive work that preceded her arrival,” mentioned Andy Sloop, who final yr left Nike after eight years as international director of zero waste and circularity.
When Hartley departed as circularity director at Underneath Armour in 2024, friends known as her “one of many true class acts of the trade” and “an actual thought chief and an inspiring champion.”
In between company roles, Hartley continued serving as a board member of the nonprofit Accelerating Circularity. She has additionally used social media to laud insurance policies, together with California’s Accountable Textile Restoration Act, which requires attire corporations to handle merchandise after customers are carried out utilizing them.
Upcoming challenges
Final yr, Hartley shared with Trellis her view of round economic system management: “Due to the complexity inherent in circularity work, it helps to create shared, high-level roadmaps in order that the general technique and tempo of objective progress is known throughout groups,” she mentioned. “This additionally helps create continuity as new folks be a part of or roles change over time.”
That very a lot applies to Nike, which has undergone vital shakeups over the previous two years. Two months after axing about 30 p.c of its sustainability professionals, the corporate promoted former international footwear vp Jaycee Pribulsky to chief sustainability officer, changing Noel Kinder (now at Lululemon). Later, Nike changed embattled CEO John Donahoe with Elliott Hill. And this spring, Nike promoted Noah Murphy-Reinhertz to senior director of sustainable product design, shortly earlier than Chief Innovation Officer John Hoke retired after 33 years.
However employees turmoil is way from the one problem Hartley faces. The Beaverton, Oregon, large is a research in contrasts in the case of scaling round economic system work.
To start with, the Science Primarily based Targets initiative (SBTi) has validated the corporate’s 2030 web zero targets, however not its long-term ones. Equally, Nike shares its round design information, however has not built-in round improvements into its essential product strains. The Nike Refurbished takeback and resale program seems to be a profitable round section, but it surely’s not central to company income technique. Nike additionally options recycled content material in mainstream merchandise whereas revealing little about traceability of supplies or charges of recycling.
And though Nike is understood for savvy improvements — glue-free recyclable ISPA Hyperlink trainers, House Hippie trainers of created from scrap materials and recycled-polyester Flyknit sneakers — it has didn’t section out virgin artificial supplies. The Stand.earth Fossil Free Style Scorecard just lately awarded Nike an total C grade, and a C-minus for supplies and circularity. To its credit score, nonetheless, the model, which holds almost one-quarter of market share in athletic put on and sneakers, stood with or above its friends, together with Puma (C), Adidas (C-minus), New Stability (D) and On Operating (D).
In her 2024 interview with Trellis, Hartley famous that that circularity agendas inevitably contain a number of departments, requiring the necessity to set targets and verify accountability throughout capabilities. Sloop notes that it is a steep hill to climb at Nike, which is “massive, complicated, matrixed, always altering and has very distributed and unclear choice rights.”
Luckily, Hartley involves her new publish with greater than a decade of expertise in complicated organizations.
Earlier accomplishments
As the primary circularity professional at Underneath Armour, Hartley oversaw the creation of a instrument to assist the corporate and different companies assess and forestall microfibers from shedding from their clothes. She additionally spearheaded the institution of round design ideas for half of Underneath Armour’s merchandise, main coaching for 200 staff. And he or she collaborated on efforts to undertake options to spandex.
No cause was given for Hartley’s departure one yr in the past, which got here amid broader management reshuffling. The corporate didn’t title a direct successor.
Earlier than her busy yr at Underneath Armour, Hartley spent 11 years at Hole Inc.. She joined the San Francisco retailer in 2012 as a senior analyst in strategic sourcing, simply after incomes an MBA at MIT, and shortly labored her method up the ladder, spending her final three years there as director of product sustainability and circularity.
Whereas on the clothier, Harley established quite a few foundational sustainability efforts, together with launching its product sustainability group and partnering to create the Hole for Good technique for sustainability merchandise. She additionally cast a product resale trial and an experimental textile-to-textile recycling pilot. Underneath Hartley’s lead, Hole grew to become the primary model to hitch the U.S. Cotton Belief Protocol and a founding model member of the Ellen MacArthur Basis’s Denims Redesign undertaking.
“What I really like about trend is that it’s so relatable,” Hartley informed the podcast “Style is Your Enterprise” in 2021. “Irrespective of who you’re, whether or not you contemplate your self modern or not, all of us play a task. And I believe if we will harness that incontrovertible fact that it’s such a standard floor then it may be an actual drive for change.”
