No Pep In Its Step, But Barcelona FC Boasts Cool New Nike Uniforms

Water bottles have gotten a lot of bad press in recent years. Plenty of those plastics don’t get sent on for recycling and instead take up room at landfills. And there’s some debate about just how healthy it is to be drinking your water from plastic, anyway.

So enterprising folks have been finding plenty of good uses for old water bottles, and one of them has apparently been hired by Nike. The footwear giant has created new home and away uniforms for FC Barcelona that use recycled water bottles for the material. Each set of shirt and shorts uses up to 13 recycled plastic water bottles, according to a press release from Nike.

The uniforms for the Qatar Foundation-sponsored football club/soccer team have plenty of other design changes, but it is the behind-the-scenes shifts in technology that will have the greatest long-term effect. “An innovative manufacturing process reduces energy consumption by up to 30% compared to manufacturing traditional polyester,” the release states. “Since 2010 Nike has used an estimated 115 million recycled plastic bottles to create its high-performance (uniforms).”

Nike says the uniforms are its most environmentally friendly ever — they're 23% lighter and 20% stronger than previous soccer uniforms by the brand, with the ability to “wick moisture away from athletes to help keep them cool and dry on-pitch.”

The move comes as Barcelona's legendary manager, Pep Guardiola, is leaving the club — he's shown below in Nike's "The Chance" campaign running in Europe: