Climate Town didn’t come to the decision to sell branded merch on its site lightly. The independent media company and YouTube channel, which uses humor to educate its more than 700,000 subscribers about climate change, put the same exhaustive research into its hunt for a promo distributor that it does for its explainer videos.

“When we started thinking about making T-shirts and hats, the first option was just not to do it,” says Matt Nelsen, director, writer, researcher and executive producer for Climate Town. But after some digital hunting, Nelsen came across Ethix Merch (asi/189731). “We couldn’t find anyone else as good. No one seemed to check the right boxes until we found Ethix.”

Lindsey Cole, third from left, and Daniel Cardozo, seventh from left, both of Ethix Merch (asi/189731), have championed advocacy and education while producing ethically sourced merchandise.

Ethix Merch connected Climate Town to TS Designs, a North Carolina-based B Corp that offers a “dirt-to-shirt” Cotton of the Carolinas tee with a completely trackable supply chain. Ethix also sourced plastic-free hemp hats with cork and bamboo brims from Rustek.

Climate Town was so impressed with Ethix Merch’s honest and transparent sourcing process that it produced a 25-minute video explaining the problems with fast fashion and typical merch as well as why they chose the distributor. “They’re working on connecting ethical and sustainable apparel companies with people who want to buy ethical and sustainable s---, and they’ve done exactly that thing for us,” Climate Town host Rollie Williams sums up in the video.

Indeed, Ethix Merch started 20 years ago with the express purpose of promoting sweatshop-free sourcing and environmentally responsible products. It grew out of SweatX, a unionized, worker-owned apparel facility in Los Angeles launched by one of the founders of Ben & Jerry’s in the early 2000s. The SweatX factory didn’t last, but the lessons gleaned from the venture live on in New London, CT-based Ethix Merch, founded in 2006.

Daniel Cardozo, CEO of Ethix Merch (asi/189731), speaks at the Blue Tie Gala, an event held by the Labor 411 Foundation to raise funds to build an ethical consumer movement.

CEO Daniel Cardozo joined the company a year later, deciding to channel his anti-sweatshop activism efforts into business, coming to realize that actions like boycotts are ineffective if there aren’t better alternatives for consumers. “I like the idea of being part of building something rather than simply tearing things down or shouting at corporations,” he says.

To Cardozo, there’s an obvious connection between workers’ rights and environmental sustainability. “You can’t purchase ethically without having the environment in mind,” he explains, “and you can’t purchase sustainably without having labor in mind.”

Ethix Merch’s small but mighty team of nine is just as passionate as Cardozo. “We consider ourselves advocates more than anything for the movement,” says Lindsey Cole, director of marketing and communications at Ethix and a member of the ASI Promo for the Planet editorial advisory board. “Part of what makes us a little different is that we’re very mission-driven.”

Advocacy, education and community organizing are the building blocks for how Ethix Merch approaches the business of promo. That’s readily evident in efforts Cardozo and his team co-found and champion, including the Catholic Ethical Purchasing Alliance (CEPA), Buy Your Values, the Alliance for Responsible Apparel Manufacturing & Purchasing, the Labor 411 Foundation and the Healthy Textiles Coalition.

It’s difficult, Cardozo says, to convince buyers on a case-by-case basis to up their budgets to accommodate ethical purchasing; more effective is working collectively to update the internal procurement standards of larger networks of buyers. “We’re gradually working on shifting the tide,” he adds.

“You can’t purchase ethically without having the environment in mind, and you can’t purchase sustainably without having labor in mind.”Daniel Cardozo, Ethix Merch (asi/189731)

Michael Nuttall, assistant vice president for mission and ministry at Santa Clara University, is a witness to the distributor’s efforts. A member of CEPA, the Jesuit Catholic institution in California has been working with Ethix for years on a variety of projects, from sustainable T-shirts to a new initiative that brings Capeltic coffee, produced by an indigenous worker-owned cooperative in Mexico, to university cafés.

When it comes to sustainability and ethical purchasing, Ethix Merch is adept at nimbly navigating what’s “pragmatic and possible right now” with more high-minded aspirations and goals, Nuttall says.

“My experience constantly with Ethix Merch,” he adds, “is this really wonderful tension of what can be done short term to what’s possible to serve the long term.”

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