Report: Nike slashes sustainability staff

Nike has reportedly lost 30% of employees who worked primarily on sustainability within the company, due to layoffs, voluntary departures or role transfers, according to a joint investigation by ProPublica and The Oregonian. 

The sportswear giant made waves eight years ago when it committed to both doubling its business and halving its carbon footprint. The company’s chief sustainability officer at the time, Hannah Jones, said achieving the goal would take “innovation on a scale we’ve never seen before.”

However, in December, the dozen or so people on Nike’s celebrated Sustainable Innovation team were told, reportedly in a Zoom call before sunrise, that the team was being folded, and that the vice president who ran the team was gone. It was the first in a series of cuts that one former employee described to ProPublica ass “the sustainability bloodbath.” 

The company’s Sustainable Innovation team, for a while, embodied the commitment. It’s leathers made from kelp and foams replaced hundreds of tons of rubber and leather used in traditional Nike products. It also helped in testing and refining the foam material in the Pegasus 41 shoe that Nike says reduced the carbon footprint of the product’s midsole by almost half. 

However, with sales struggling, Nike executives in December announced a plan to cut costs by $2 billion over the next three years. Nike has laid off about 20% of employees who worked primarily on sustainability initiatives, The Oregonian/OregonLive and ProPublica found. Another 10% left voluntarily or were transferred to other roles within the company. 

Among the 700 job cuts to Nike’s Oregon employees, nearly half were vice presidents, senior directors, and directors, The Oregonian reported. 

Nike’s sustainability staff of about 150 people was disproportionately affected, compared to its 2% reduction companywide and 7% reduction at its Oregon headquarters. 

But even before layoffs, Nike had missed its own goals for reducing its carbon footprint. Instead, its emissions have grown steadily since 2015. The company’s stock price, however, has roughly halved since late 2021, including an almost 20% drop in late June. 

Jaycee Pribulsky, who was named Nike’s chief sustainability officer in February, described to reporters Nike’s current strategy as “embedding” the work throughout the company rather than having a team dedicated specifically to sustainability.

“We’re not walking away from sustainability,” Pribulsky said. “I mean, full stop. We are committed.”

Since Nike’s dissolution of its sustainability team, there have been several other significant cuts within the industry. Shell cut staff from its offshore wind arm as CEO Wael Sawan seeks to move the company away from the capital-intensive renewables sector, Bloomberg reported. Barlcays also cut some employees from a team of more than 100 bankers focused on the energy transition, Bloomberg reported. The cuts, which came amid broader job cuts at the company, included staffers with expertise in climate technologies such as carbon capture and hydrogen, the report said.