Adidas

Adidas is the world’s second-largest manufacturer of sportswear after Nike. Like its
competitor, the brand has been known for using cheap production via sweatshops and
child labor to become the multinational corporation it is today. Indeed, it seems that
all corporate-brand sportswear garments are made by exploiting workers and ignoring
basic human rights. 
Evidence was reported in which it was stated that Adidas products were made in two
factories using child labour, forced overtime and harassment. Representatives of
workers in two Indonesian factories supplying the German company, informed Euro
MPs that in the Nikomax Gemilang and Tuntex factories, in the Indonesian capital of
Jakarta, children as young as 15 were made to work 15-hour days, punished for
refusing to do overtime, paid less than $60 a month, penalised for taking leave during
medical difficulties, and had illegal deductions taken from wages as punishments for
minor misdemeanours.
In another commonality of the sportswear industry, Adidas garments undergo several
chemical treatments to make them more colorful, flexible, durable, or water-repellant.
Over the years, these processes have polluted the waters and are horrible for local
ecosystems. 
Public outrage over this prompted a pledge from the brand to settle this issue,
committing to zero discharge of hazardous chemicals by 2020. The most
recent Chemical Footprint progress report Adidas has available| is from April 2019.
Unfortunately, this document is only to inform the public of what implementations
have been made. It has no information on how effective and successful anything has
been.
Furthermore, the company uses synthetic microfibers, which the brand admits is both
necessary for its products yet harmful for the environment. Conveniently, the brand
waited until 2019 before founding an initiative to address this, and it confirms Adidas
has not reached its zero discharge by 2020 goal.
Adidas was also caught up in a greenwashing scandal in late 2021. Adidas has been
found guilty of making false and misleading sustainability claims by France’s
Advertising Ethics Jury after a case brought in relation to its Stan Smith shoe. In a
case, the complainant argued that Adidas’ advertisement for the shoe as “50%
recycled” was misleading because it is not clear whether half of the materials that
make up the product are recycled or if they can be recycled at the end of their life –
and, if so, how.
The complainant also suggested the product’s “End plastic waste“ logo is misleading
as it is clearly not the case that by “buying a product made partially with recycled
plastic that we will put an end to plastic waste.”
To sum up, We saw that Adidas had been getting better with transparency and was
one of the few big-name sportswear brands to make an effort in addressing its issues
with forced labor. Nonetheless, the brand continues to benefit from some of the worst
instances of modern slavery with Uyghur (Chinese) forced\sweatshop labor.