Footprint

Our Environmental Footprint

Printing

The inks we use are water-based, sustainable and bio degradeable inks, which are much greener than traditional t-shirt printing methods.

Our t-shirts are printed in the UK by a reputable company with fair wages, and good employee rights.

The T Shirts

Gildan T shirts. We use Gildan T shirts because it's the only brand used by our (and most) printing companies which offers the style we're looking for. There currently aren't any printing companies which offer a good ethical T shirt, with good colour choice, weight, and large print size.

The cost of the T shirt isn't a big deal for us, we'd happily pay more for a more ethical T shirt. Until we can afford to manufacture our own, or a decent alternative pops up, we're using Gildan and putting pressure on them from within.

Gildan's factories are mostly based in Central America, Bangladesh, USA, and the Caribbean. They have had a poor record with workers' rights, safety, and wages. At present (4.7.19) there is a lot of pressure on them to change, which they appear to slowly be doing. They claim to be paying a fair wage now (although we suspect it is still too low) and offering more employee rights and safety.

According to Gildan the wastewater from their facilities uses a natural treatment which 'virtually' eliminates all dyes and chemicals. The chemicals they use are aligned with the industry standards such as Oeko-Tex 100, REACH and Prop-65. (They are industry standards, but in an industry which is currently quite damaging).

I (Rob, the owner) have worked in clothing factories in the past so I know how crappy the jobs are. Not just in Central America or China but in the UK. If we ever get to the stage where we manufacture our own, we will do things very differently. For now though there appears to be a lot of pressure on the big companies to change, which they are doing...slowly.

Cotton

Again this is an issue. We use Gildan T shirts which are 100% cotton. Cotton in general uses a lot of water to grow (2700 litres per T shirt). A better material would be Hemp, Linen, Recycled Cotton, or fourthly Organic Cotton. Again because we don't have the resources we can't make our own yet, and can only hope to pressure and lobby Gildan into changing.

Gildan cotton is grown in the USA (maybe elsewhere too but we couldn't find any info). Cotton growing currently uses pesticides, which we are strongly against. In certain areas of the world (not necessarily Gildan's cotton, we don't know) where pesticides are used on cotton, throat cancer rates have sky-rocketed. We strongly encourage alternatives to pesticides. However cotton appears to be better than polyester, nylon, or acrylic where fragments are entering the oceans and into the food chain (if you're a meat eater).

Shipping

More info to be written soon...