By Thomas Miner

March 9, 2010 – With only 3 months left until the first kick, Nike has unveiled their uniforms for the 2010 World Cup taking place in South Africa. Nine teams including Brazil, England and the Netherlands will be clad in kits made of 100% recycled PET bottles which have be converted into polyester yarn.

While not the first time the company has introduced recycled PET clothing to a major sporting event, it does mark the first occurrence where all of Nike’s national teams will be equipped with the sustainable gear. In addition to teams mentioned above, Portugal, United States, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Serbia and Slovenia all will wear shirts that are each made from up to eight recycled PET bottles.

Bottles will be collected from Taiwanese and Japanese landfills, and then processed in Taiwan before shipped as polyester thread to manufacturing facilities. Manufacturing the Jerseysusing recycled materials also requires 30% less energy than manufacturing from virgin materials, a savings the company hopes will offset the slightly increased cost of production.

So far Nike claims to have removed over 13 million plastic bottles from the landfills, or approximately 558,000 pounds of polyester waste.  The World Cup replica jerseys will also be made from recycled PET, allowing fans to wear the same PET jerseys as their favorite players and expanding the initiative’s effect exponentially.