Nike are estimated to produce 185,000 metric tonnes (408 million pounds) of waste in 2026, about 500 tonnes every day. Almost all of it is factory waste from making shoes and clothes, not the boxes that reach your door.
That total is lower than it was a few years ago, but not because the factories got cleaner. It tracks Nike's sales, which fell about 10% in 2025 and held roughly flat in 2026.
The figure covers Nike's own sites and the suppliers who make most of their products. It leaves out the raw materials further up the chain, like the cotton in a T-shirt, which Nike do not report, so the real total is higher.
Nike call their plan Move to Zero, a promise of zero carbon and zero waste, and like to point out that 98% of their waste stays out of landfill.
It is a tidy number that hides a messier one. Of the roughly 185,000 tonnes Nike produce in 2026, close to a quarter is burned for fuel rather than recycled, and the total is shrinking only because the company is selling less.
Nike's annual waste totals (2020-2026)
Nike don't publish a single annual waste total of their own. Instead, the table below pulls together the separate waste streams they report each year, so you can see their estimated yearly total from 2020 to 2026 in one place.
| Year | Total waste (metric tonnes) | Change on prior year |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 185,000 | - |
| 2025 | 185,000 | -10% |
| 2024 | 205,079 | -7.8% |
| 2023 | 222,475 | +7.5% |
| 2022 | 206,999 | +5.4% |
| 2021 | 196,463 | -13.4% |
| 2020 | 226,886 | baseline |
Note: Figures for 2020 to 2024 sum the five streams in Nike's FY24 Sustainability Data: footwear, apparel, distribution, air-cushion manufacturing and headquarters. Nike have published nothing newer, so 2025 and 2026 scale that total by revenue, down 10% in 2025 and flat in 2026.
Across these years the total has moved up and down between roughly 196,000 and 227,000 tonnes without ever settling into a steady decline. The more recent dip lines up with Nike's falling sales rather than with any real change inside the factories.
The story of Nike
Nike started in 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports, selling Japanese running shoes from the boot of a car. The name Nike and the swoosh arrived in 1971. One of the founders, the track coach Bill Bowerman, poured rubber into a waffle iron to make a grippier sole.
That same rubber, with foam and synthetic leather, is still the biggest single source of Nike's waste today. The company a waffle iron helped build still runs on materials that are hard to throw away cleanly.
Inside a Nike store. The orange boxes on the counter are the tidy end of a long line. Most of Nike's waste sits much further back, in the factories that cut and mould the shoes inside them.
Today Nike are the largest sportswear company in the world:
- Founded in 1964, renamed Nike in 1971.
- Revenue of $46.3 billion in 2025, down about 10% on the year before.
- Footwear brought in around $35 billion of that, apparel about $14 billion.
- Most Nike products are made by contract factories across Asia, not by Nike itself.
Where does Nike's waste come from?
Almost all of Nike's reported waste is industrial, meaning the leftovers of mass production rather than anything a shopper ever sees. Three sources do most of the work.
- Making the shoes. Footwear factories alone throw off about 115,000 tonnes a year, more than half the total. A single trainer is dozens of materials glued together, and the offcuts of rubber, foam and synthetic leather are hard to reuse.
- Moving the product. Nike's distribution centres add around 43,000 tonnes a year, mostly packaging and the waste of shipping product around the world.
- Hazardous process waste. Making footwear also produced 15,206 tonnes of hazardous waste in 2024, the solvents, glues and treated materials that come with sticking a shoe together.
Apparel factories, the plants that make Nike's air cushions, and the offices account for the rest. In every case the waste is created where the products are made, long before any of it reaches a shop or a doorstep.
How much gets recycled?
Nike say they keep 98% of their waste out of landfill, and that much is true. But keeping waste out of landfill is not the same as recycling it, and the difference between those two figures turns out to be larger than it first appears.
| Outcome | Share in 2024 |
|---|---|
| Recycled | 75% |
| Burned for energy | 23% |
| Landfilled or incinerated without recovery | 2% |
Note: Shares come from the enterprise figures in Nike's FY24 Sustainability Data: 98% of waste diverted from landfill, 75% recycled. The gap between the two is mostly energy recovery, plus a little composting.
About a quarter of Nike's waste is burned for energy, incinerated to generate power rather than recycled. That still counts towards the 98% kept out of landfill, even though it has not been recycled at all. The share that is genuinely recycled is 75%, a little short of Nike's own 80% target.
Waste per Nike product
The clearest area of improvement is how much waste Nike create for each item they make. Even though the overall tonnage has stayed roughly flat, the waste built into a single product has been falling year after year.
| Year | Waste per unit (grams) |
|---|---|
| 2020 | 292.4 |
| 2021 | 274.6 |
| 2022 | 269.4 |
| 2023 | 268.5 |
| 2024 | 260.1 |
Note: Waste per unit is reported directly by Nike in their FY24 Sustainability Data, covering manufacturing, distribution centres and headquarters. Nike do not publish per-unit figures for 2025 or 2026.
That works out to an 11% cut in waste per product since 2020, which is real progress on the factory floor. The reason the overall total has not dropped in step is simply that Nike keep making more products, so a smaller amount of waste per item still adds up to a similar figure.
The waste targets Nike missed
For 2025, Nike set themselves three waste goals under Move to Zero, and came up short on all of them.
- Keep 100% of waste out of landfill. They reached 98%.
- Recycle 80% of waste. They reached 75%.
- Reuse, recycle or donate ten times more leftover and returned product. They managed about five times, and the figure actually fell, from 17.9 million items in 2023 to 6.9 million in 2024.
How others see it
Independent reviewers are more cautious than Nike's own messaging. The ethical-rating site Good On You scores Nike "It's a Start", three out of five, flagging the absence of a full materials breakdown and of clear proof that they are on track for their climate target.
There is also the question of unsold stock. In 2021, reporters from NDR, Die Zeit and the research group Flip hid GPS trackers in new, unworn Nike shoes, returned them, and traced them to a facility in Herenthout, Belgium, where they were shredded rather than resold.
Nike are not standing still, though. Their Nike Grind programme has turned more than 148 million pounds of worn-out shoes and factory offcuts into material for new products and sports surfaces since 1992, even as the company keeps missing the waste targets it sets itself.
Frequently asked questions about Nike's waste
Below, the most common questions about Nike's waste production are answered.
How much waste does Nike produce each year?
Nike produce an estimated 185,000 metric tonnes of waste in 2026, about 500 tonnes a day, across their own sites and the suppliers who make most of their products. Their last fully reported year, to May 2024, totalled 205,000 tonnes.
What kind of waste does Nike produce most of?
Factory waste from making shoes. Footwear manufacturing throws off about 115,000 tonnes a year, more than half of Nike's total, mostly offcuts of rubber, foam and synthetic leather that are difficult to recycle.
Is Nike's waste actually recycled?
Partly. Nike recycle about 75% of their waste and keep 98% out of landfill, but the gap between those two numbers, close to a quarter of the total, is burned for energy rather than recycled.
Did Nike meet their waste targets?
No. Nike missed all three of their 2025 waste goals. Waste kept out of landfill came in at 98% against a 100% target, recycling reached 75% against an 80% target, and reused product ran at roughly five times the baseline against a goal of ten.
Is Nike's waste going up or down?
Down from its earlier range, but not for the reason you might hope. The fall came in 2025 with a roughly 10% drop in Nike's sales, and held flat in 2026. Total waste sat between 196,000 and 227,000 tonnes for the five years before that, so the drop tracks weaker sales, not a cleaner factory floor.
How do we estimate Nike's waste?
We sum the five waste streams Nike report for their last full year, to May 2024, which come to 205,000 tonnes. Nike have reported nothing newer, so we scale that total by their revenue: down 10% in 2025, roughly flat in 2026. That gives about 185,000 tonnes.
How does Nike compare to other big brands?
Nike sit in the middle of the pack on disclosure. They report far more waste detail than fast-fashion platforms like SHEIN, and roughly in line with retailers like Zalando, though like Apple they lean on a diverted-from-landfill figure that flatters the recycling picture.
Images: PaulGorduiz106
