It's becoming increasingly important to consider sustainability when purchasing apparel, and this especially holds true for the screen printing and apparel industries. Sustainable tshirts are not only better for the environment, but they also provide a unique opportunity to make a statement while reducing your carbon footprint. In this blog post, we'll take a closer look at why sustainability matters in the screen printing and apparel industries, and how we can all do our part to ensure that the shirts on our backs are more sustainable.
“The best way to be sustainable is to not produce anything, which is unrealistic in our industry. So instead we need to be smart,” said the owner of Superior Ink Printing, Dominic Rosacci. “Push to be better. Even with us in screen printing, we need to be thinking about sustainability.”
As screen printers, we (the industry) encourage brands to order more, which is making the fashion industry change the way they work as well. Brands used to have about four new drops in a year, and now we are seeing fifty two micro drops in a year. This means they are producing an overabundance of apparel to get their revenue numbers up and drive their prices down. That is why big box stores look at only selling 25% or less of what they purchase. This is where one of the biggest issues arises. With only 25% of products being sold this is extremely wasteful since only about 10% goes to Goodwill or other thrift stores. This makes the rest go to landfill and straight to our oceans.
For this reason, education about sustainability is more important to change our industries than ever.
The hardest part, is where to start with sustainability. We need to do better and change the world. To do this, it means staying in our lane and working within the screen printing and apparel industries by creating change.
What will make the biggest impact? To make a difference you need to get your team on board. Yes, we can recycle, but making sure each team member believes how we can change the scope of our industry is even more impactful.
So instead of just recycling, do the research. Find key companies around your area or the world that you can partner with to help achieve sustainability. This can even happen with hiring two people on a team to focus specifically on sustainability.
We can all do better by talking to distributors and big brands about how consumers are asking for more sustainable products. This will create a bigger ripple effect and start the change that is needed.
To learn more about “The Cold Hard Truth”, watch this video.
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