Environmental stewardship and eco-friendliness are serious topics. But, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for humor.

In a session at the early June ThreadX conference from MADE Laboratories, Rollie Williams and Matt Nelson, two of the brains behind the comedic (but educational) Climate Town YouTube channel, led a discussion with three trailblazing forces from the apparel and printing community: Eric Henry, president of TS Designs, Mike Smith, CEO, founder and “climate dad” of Aclymate; and Kathleen Neuheardt, CFO of Bonfire.

L-R: Matt Nelson and Rollie Williams of Climate Town, Eric Henry, Mike Smith and Kathleen Neuheardt

What started as a lighthearted journey (set to the Indiana Jones theme song) through the often wasteful and unethical apparel manufacturing process ended with a thoughtful roundtable about how the apparel and printing industries can create real, quantifiable change for the better.

Where Waste Comes From, & How To Avoid It

Henry brought up one of the common technologies mentioned during the event – direct-to-garment printing – and sung its praises as a “phenomenal technology” for decoration. But, he said, it comes with the caveat of needing to use a color T-shirt. Also, he said, companies often want to stock large amounts of inventory, which can lead to buying the cheapest apparel options in bulk.

While some might believe that apparel manufacturing in the U.S. is prohibitively difficult, Henry believes it’s possible, albeit with some major changes to the way it’s currently done or the way that some apparel pros might think it needs to be done. Much of that has to do with the popularity of print-on-demand allowing for apparel companies to only print what is already ordered.

“We’re not going to bring it back with tariffs, and we’re not going to bring it back to the way it was, but we believe that we can disrupt the industry,” Henry said. “Thirty percent of the clothes manufactured are not even sold. We have a broken system, but we can fix it. And part of that fix is making it here and making what you want when you want it.”

Smith added that the apparel industry is in a position where the pros are more educated on the relative sustainability of certain materials than the average consumer. This means that the burden falls on the apparel industry to aggressively educate their customer base on eco-friendly options, as they might not even know what to ask for. That could be enough to shift the industry demand toward greener choices.

“In order for this all to work, it needs to be a full team effort,” he said. “It needs to stop being sustainability as a marketing objective and more about actually changing how operations work. That goes from sales to executives to manufacturing.”

Real Change

It’s one thing to have good intentions, but to make a real difference in environmentalism a company needs to address almost every point of its supply chain process. Neuheardt described what goes into Bonfire’s “holistic sustainable approach” to ensure the products it sells are ethically sourced and decorated down to the last detail.

“I think some people think, ‘Oh, OK, I’ve got a 100% organic cotton tee, it’s green,’” she said. “Well, who’s doing the decoration? What are they using for the pre-treat? How are they managing their shop? And so, what we’ve done, is develop a small, regionally dispersed network of print partners. I go there personally a few times every year to each one of them. I know folks on their floor, they treat their people right and respectfully, so they don’t have turnover. And they’re continually iterating as well on, ‘Hey, we’ve found a way to do a more efficient pre-treat,’ ‘We found a way to be sourcing these color-based ink for the DTG,’ etc.”

For Bonfire, the eco-conscious process goes down to ensuring that the polybags they ship are 100% recycled and recyclable. The company also ensures it uses as little ink as possible for decoration while also leveraging its geographically broad network of printers to minimize shipping distances to buyers.

Transparency Is Everything

Beyond partnering with ethical decorators and manufacturers, Henry advised apparel decorators and distributors to make their supply chains transparent. People want to do business with companies where they can see exactly where the product came from, and where it goes before ending up in their hands. That requires the supplier or distributor to do their own due diligence.

“I know we live in a global economy, and we’re not putting that genie back in the bottle,” Henry said. “I just want to know the facility in Bangladesh that’s making your product, and give me a contact, an email address, and let me talk to them. Let me send them an email.”

Henry adds that you can’t simply rely on the “Made in” information on the T-shirt’s tag.

“The one thing I like to say when people come and see our designs is, every day you have a choice,” he said. “The clothes you wear, the energy you use and the food you eat. Wake up, because this is being jammed down our throat with some really slick marketing and advertising. We have the ability – some of us, as some of us don’t have the ability – to push back, and that’s what we need to do. I have no problem competing in a global marketplace. But if you’re only going to bring price, then I won’t show up, because you’re going to blow me out of the water. Let’s talk about impacted people and impacted planet, and let’s give that information to the customer.”

Certifications for things like organic cotton, in Henry’s view, can sometimes be misleading, too, citing the “organic cotton” manufactured by alleged forced labor of the Uighur people in China.

“That’s where you end up with a lack of transparency,” Henry said. “There’s no perfect silver-bullet solution. But what we can do is be more transparent. We can learn. Collaboration and cooperation is going to turn this thing around.”

“I have no problem competing in a global marketplace. But if you’re only going to bring price, then I won’t show up, because you’re going to blow me out of the water. Let’s talk about impacted people and impacted planet, and let’s give that information to the customer.”Eric Henry, president of TS Designs

The Dollars & Cents of a Greener Future

When asked about new green manufacturing and technology, and whether these programs could eventually come with tax breaks or money-saving incentives from the government, Smith said, “probably not.”

He did, however, mention some programs that are gaining traction, most notably end-of-life programs where products can be converted into fuel. He also cited a program by the company LanzaTech, which converted a capsule of polyester apparel items made from recycled carbon emissions.

“It’s kind of around-the-edges sort of stuff there, but that will probably continue, because one thing the [current presidential] administration hasn’t gotten rid of is something called the 45Q tax credit,” Smith said.

The 45Q tax credit provides a tax incentive ranging from $60 to $180 for each ton of qualified carbon oxide captured and either stored or used in different ways.

Advancements in Alternative Materials

The continued use of hemp for not just apparel fibers but also the decoration process is something Neuheardt said she hopes to see.

“That would be fantastic from my perspective,” she said.

The issue, for some states, is the outlawed use of it due to its association with marijuana, which Henry calls a “mistake.”

Neuheardt also mentioned the growing use of algae for the print world specifically.

“I’m excited about some of the advancements in algae for packaging and inks,” she said. “I think that could be a game-changer as well.”

Henry added that for an industry looking for alternative materials for dyes and inks, you don’t have to overcomplicate it. These products are in our own backyards – sometimes literally.

“What excites me is connecting agriculture to apparel,” he said.

Henry then pointed to his own T-shirt, which was an earthy shade of brown, and explained that it was dyed with black walnuts.

“Just as an example, 4 billion pounds of black walnuts fall on the ground,” he said. “And black walnut is a North American tree. It doesn’t grow anywhere else. And we only eat 20 million pounds of it. We’ve got all the brown dye right here. So we don’t have to depend on the fossil fuel industry. Let’s work with our farmers, and let’s basically get out of our silos and think, ‘How can we partner with our farmers?’”

The next step, Henry said, is sort of a two-birds, one-stone approach to minimizing waste while also creating environmental dyes for apparel.

“Now we’re looking at food waste,” he said. “We will be introducing, probably in a couple of weeks, our work with a company out of Europe to develop three distinct colors from spent coffee grounds.”

Other food-based dyes can come from avocado pits – which were used for a Chipotle promotion in the past – onion skins and purple sweet potatoes.

“There’s a lot of food that we can capture dye out of, and then turn that material left over to compost,” Henry said. “And then we can get it back to the farmers. And farmers love compost.”

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