Fast fashion revolutionized the industry by creating supply chains, manufacturing outlets, and shipping protocols designed to move designs quickly and cheaply from runways to retail outlets. The strategy has been highly profitable for clothing manufacturers and both convenient and cheap for consumers.
One thing, it’s not sustainable. Clothing production accounts for 10% of carbon emissions and is second only to agriculture when it comes to water consumption. Sustainable clothing brands hope to reverse these trends with a focus on eco-friendly clothing.
What is Sustainable Clothing?
Sustainable clothing is a movement advocating for a complete rethinking of clothing manufacturing to increase benefits to manufacturers, employees, and consumers, while minimizing the environmental impact of production.
What Materials are Used to Make Sustainable Shirts?
Material choices have a significant impact on the environmental cost of clothing, with some seemingly natural materials being less sustainable than people think. Cotton, for instance, is a highly water-intensive material choice despite being a plant-based material.
Sustainable clothing brands are turning to materials that consume fewer resources. Fast-growing bamboo and industrial hemp are possible choices for eco-friendly clothing. These companies are also using Repreve polyester to make sustainable t-shirts from recycled plastic bottles, reducing the amount of single-use plastics entering landfills and the environment.
Sustainable Clothing and the Human Equation
Sustainable clothing brands are concerned with more than just providing eco-friendly clothing. These advocates get involved in every aspect of the fashion industry, including the human cost of fast fashion.
Sustainable clothing brands such as Allmade are committed to improving garment worker conditions and paying employees a fair wage, helping break the cycle of poverty perpetuated by many fast fashion companies.
The Life of Sustainable Shirts
Another side effect of fast fashion is that people don’t keep clothing for very long. While we bought 60% more clothing in 2014 than in 2000, we’re only keeping it for half as long. Sustainable clothing is designed to survive multiple fashion cycles to ensure people get the most use from their garments. This means eco-friendly garments tend to favor timeless fashions. Sustainable promotional t-shirts, for instance, won’t change much from one fashion cycle to the next so that you can wear them for years.
Sustainable Clothing Brand Spotlight: Allmade
Allmade is one of the most successful sustainable clothing brands on the market, with a commitment to an eco-friendly supply chain, recycled materials, and living wages for their garment workers. The company operates factories in Haiti, where they play a role in lifting people out of poverty and providing much-needed orphan care.
Allmade makes its sustainable shirts from blends of Repreve, which uses plastic water bottles in the fabric-making process. Unifi, the company that makes Repreve, has recycled over 20 billion plastic bottles. Allmade blends 50 percent Repreve with 25 percent organic US-grown cotton and Tencel Modal, a fiber made from biodegradable wood pulp processed using Earth-friendly solvents.
The combination of Repreve, organic cotton, and Tencel Modal creates a tri-blend fabric that is incredibly soft and comfortable. Examples of AllMade sustainable t-shirts include:
• The Unisex Tri-Blend Long Sleeve Tee?
• The Women’s Tri-Blend V-Neck Tee,?
• The Unisex Tri-Blend V-Neck Tee,?
• The Unisex Tri-Blend Tee?
• The Youth Tri-Blend Tee?
Allmade has also risen to meet the demand for comfortable cloth face masks. Their smart-looking Tri-Blend Full Mask comes in packs of five, with each mask made from the equivalent of one recycled plastic water bottle. Like Allmade sustainable shirts, Allmasks are easy to customize with logos, making them excellent promotional choices for organizations concerned with sustainability.
Prove to your customers that your organization honors the environment by using promotional garments from sustainable clothing brands. Triple Crown Products can help you choose eco-friendly clothing with screen-printed or embroidered logos to increase your brand recognition.