Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooal! Or is it? In a publicity stunt as big as the FIFA World Cup itself, Adidas has erected a giant, six-meter soccer ball outside of Crown Towers on Melbourne’s Southbank. Inside the ball is a fully contained apartment where the winner of an Australian Adidas competition will live and watch all the World Cup action for the duration of the games. To make the huge sphere look like an Adidas product, the ball was wrapped with vinyl graphics printed with HP Latex inks on an Energy-Star rated HP Designjet L25500 printer. Melbourne-based signage company Fleeting Image fabricated and installed the wrap. On the day the ball was to be covered, the Fleeting Image team battled gusty winds up to 55 mph and attempted to cover the ball in between rain showers, wiping down the ball repeatedly before the vinyl graphics would adhere. According to HP sources, the HP Latex inks are water based, contain no Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs), produce odorless prints, and are durable enough to stand up to Melbourne’s winter environment. Fleeting Image had no trouble in creating exact matches for the FIFA or Addidas brand colors. The graphics were printed in sections, and required 50 meters of vinyl substrate. Sadly, the vinyl substrate is not as eco-friendly as the inks printed on it. Soft vinyl contains phthalates, which have been linked to reproductive health and respiratory issues. Vinyl production also has being linked to the creation of dioxins which are carcinogenic persistent bio accumulative toxins. So, like so many things in the realm of sustainability, the giant Australian Adidas soccer ball is a mixed bag. It’s great that the ink used for the graphics is an environmental winner. It’s too bad that the substrate material won’t move it forward into the next green round.