Arsenal swap red shirts for green strip

Arsenal have this week become the latest football team to announce they will be playing in green shirts next season, joining Brazil, Portugal and the Netherlands in adopting a strip made from recycled plastic bottles.

The new strip, which was unveiled this week, is part of Nike's Considered Design programme, which uses fibres recovered from recycled plastic bottles to make the breathable fabric used for the shirts.

Nike claims the process uses bottles recovered from Japan and Taiwan and serves to cut energy use during shirt manufacture by up to 30 per cent.

The company also claims that in total its Considered Design range has diverted about 13 million plastic water bottles from landfill, representing a total of 254,000kg of polyester waste.

Arsenal said that both the shirts used by the players and those available to fans would be made using the same recycled material.

Arsenal player Theo Walcott welcomed the new shirt, which marks the Club's 125th anniversary with a traditional 70s style red and white design. "The colours are very traditional, it feels nice and it's made from recycled plastic bottles so what more can you ask for?" he said.

The launch highlights the rapid expansion of Nike's Considered Design programme. The same material is already used for a range of club shirts including those from FC Barcelona, Inter Milan, Manchester United and Celtic, and Nike announced earlier this summer that the World Cup strips for Brazil, Portugal, the Netherlands and six other teams were also made using recycled bottles.