LONDON – [26.02.10] Many of the world‘s leading players, including Cristiano Ronaldo, Robinho and Ji-Sung Park will take to the pitch in South Africa this summer wearing the most environmentally-friendly and technologically-advanced kit in football’s history.

For the first time, all of Nike’s national teams, including Brazil, Portugal and The Netherlands, will be wearing jerseys made entirely from recycled polyester, each one produced from up to eight recycled plastic bottles.

To make the 2010 national team kits, Nike’s fabric suppliers sourced discarded plastic bottles from Japanese and Taiwanese landfill sites and then melted them down to produce new yarn that was ultimately converted to fabric for the jerseys.

“With today’s announcement, we are equipping athletes with newly designed uniforms that not only look great and deliver performance benefits, but are also made with recycled materials, creating less impact on our environment,” said Charlie Denson, President, Nike Brand.

This process saves raw materials and reduces energy consumption by up to 30% compared to manufacturing virgin polyester. By using recycled polyester for its new range of national jerseys, Nike prevented nearly 13 million plastic bottles, totalling nearly 254,000 kg of polyester waste, from going into landfill sites. This amount would be enough to cover more than 29 football pitches. If the recycled bottles used to make the jerseys were laid end-to-end they would cover more than 3,000 kilometres, which is more than the entire coastline of South Africa.

The national team kits represent an important step in the process to make all Nike products more sustainable.

The teams wearing Nike’s new national team jerseys in South Africa are: Brazil, The Netherlands, Portugal, USA, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Serbia, and Slovenia.