One of the reasons we chose to work with Printful for making our bioinspired outerwear is because of their authentic sustainability efforts. Elaboration and links to additional information are below.
Closed Loop. Printful has a lot of options when it comes to choosing clothing to put designs on (i.e., “blanks”). For clothing, we’ve only selected blanks that are 100% cotton, grown organically as much as possible. Our blanks do not have any plastics such as polyester mixes (even though Printful uses recycled polyester). This fact, plus the use of biodegradable inks and dyes, mean that our clothes will return to the Earth when people are finally done with them, leaving no waste.
Climate. Being made of cotton means the CO2 added to the atmosphere when our clothing biodegrades is the same amount of CO2 removed from the atmosphere by the cotton plants they are made of (i.e., carbon neutral). However, there is some CO2 added to the atmosphere from other aspects of the current production and fulfillment process, from manufacturing and shipping. Print-on-demand and other aspects of Printful’s process minimizes this, but some net addition of CO2 to the atmosphere still needs addressing. For now, this is being done with carbon offsets (that fund renewable energy and forest restoration projects), which can be added with a click of a button to every item we sell. The result is no net addition of CO2 to the atmosphere from our gear.
The links below provide more details:
Read more about Printful’s sustainability efforts generally here.
Read more about Printful’s inks here.
Read more about Printful’s carbon offsets here.
Read more about Printful’s packaging here.
*The backpacks and headbands are the only items we sell from Printful that contain polyester. We are looking for alternatives that meet these items’ durability and stretchability requirements.
