Social Conscience T-Shirt Competition @ DistrictCotton.com

Submit to Your Social Conscience - Submit Your Eco Tee!

I was immersed in a “PHP programming hell” of my own making, desperately trying to install a directory script for TshirtPrinter.org* , when a very welcome distraction arrived in my inbox from Brett Novick of DistrictCotton.com. Brett wanted me to bring everyone’s attention to the latest round of their Ethical T-Shirt Design Competition - The theme is “Big City”, and it will benefit a very worthy cause, the charity “Brooklyn’s Trees Not Trash.” You can vote for any of the designs here or if you’d like to submit a t-shirt (read the guidelines first buddy!), you can email them here. This May/June the contest will benefit Trees Not Trash in Bushwick (or East Williamsburg) - Submissions are accepted until June 20.

The Prize is $300 cash, plus a $100 gift certificate to DC, plus $250 every time they reprint the shirt. Read more

Fair Trade Eco T-Shirts - a designers’ dilemma

There’s a moral obligation for all t-shirt designers to try and pressure the industry, alongside the consumer, to practice business more ethically. This for me is a completely different argument to judging the conditions of the Third World from a First World perspective. Here the only people who we can blame are the t-shirt printers and textile industries of the West, which is fine and dandy with me! Read more

Plastic Tees - Coca Cola’s Plastic Fashion Stunt

Coca-Cola’s Plastic Tees

Is it a cynical stunt? Should we see these new Plastic Tees as the future of ecologically sustainable clothing? Wal-Mart stores across the USA will display Coca-Cola apparel created from recycled plastic bottles. They maybe colourful t-shirts but they aren’t so ecological after all, they have actually blended recycled plastic bottles with cotton and besides they give Coca-Cola a chance to extend their marketing reach even further! Behind the somewhat obvious slogans such as “Make your Plastic Fantastic” and “Rehash your Trash”, is a company desperately trying to “appear to” reduce its Carbon Footprint.

I have offered an alternative of my own, essentially free t-shirt designs for people to have printed or print themselves locally, on used clothing wherever possible. Recently I designed a t-shirt to spread the word for a political cause, i.e boycotting the Beijing Olympics 2008 and I offered this option as a way for anyone to be able to join in the protest.

My point is that corporations will never be green, it is not in their nature to be, they are profit hungry animals the corporations. Essentially as with all economic systems, expansion and growth keep the rich rich, decline reduces the value of everything including share ownership, corporate career advancement. I’m telling you most of this junk won’t be here in another decade or so. Imagine trucking a load of cans of Cola across the States in a few decades, imagine the fuel bill. If you can’t make it locally, forget it. Most plastic is formed for the purposes of packaging, and essentially image branded packaging. The most ecological path that Coca-Cola and all the corporate giants can take is closure. Read more