Sustainability is an integral part of the conversation in a variety of industries, from high fashion to higher education. Many institutions are taking pains to recycle and repurpose items – rather than send them to a landfill – and more brands are exploring innovative earth-friendly materials.

Here are three developments and how promotional products pros might apply them in their own businesses.

Why Hug a Tree When You Could ‘Snog a Log’?

This Stella McCartney tee was made from regenerative cotton, with a transparent supply chain courtesy of the blockchain.

Fashion designer Stella McCartney has long been a champion of sustainable materials. As she recently told Time: “When I first started, I was definitely the eco weirdo in the room.” But tastes are changing, and there’s more of an appetite for the kind of innovations McCartney has been experimenting with. Recent highlights include a bag made from MIRUM, a plastic- and fossil fuel-free synthetic material crafted from a custom blend of natural and renewable vegetal and mineral-based ingredients.

For a photoshoot at Vogue earlier this year, model Cara Delevingne wore a Stella McCartney sleeveless bodysuit embellished with hundreds of bioplastic sequins from Radiant Matter. The sequins are made from renewable polymer cellulose extracted from trees, with material properties that make them naturally reflect light, rather than traditional plastic sequins that are often treated with other materials to make them sparkle.

But perhaps most relevant for the promotional apparel industry is McCartney’s Summer 2023 “Snog a Log” T-shirt, crafted from 100% regenerative cotton sourced from Turkey. Proponents of regenerative cotton say it goes beyond organic requirements to improve things like soil health, support biodiversity and enhance ecosystem resilience. The designer is also using blockchain technology to ensure supply chain transparency and traceability.

Promo ready? Regenerative cotton is starting to appear in some apparel available in the industry. The Patagonia women’s Ahnya quarter-zip (42150) from Driving Impressions (asi/50864) is made with 57% Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) cotton. Terra Thread, a B Corp which offers organic cotton bags through Top 40 supplier PCNA (asi/66887), launched a line of ROC cotton apparel earlier this year. As visibility of this certification grows, expect more sustainability-focused brands to seek it out.

How To Rebrand a School Without Trashing the Past

After a university-wide rebranding, merch featuring the old school name and branding was upcycled for a student fashion show.

Last April, Canada’s Ryerson University officially became Toronto Metropolitan University. However, with the rebranding came a dilemma: what to do with all the merch bearing the school’s defunct moniker. Throwing it out wasn’t an option, and not everything was easily recyclable, so the university created its Branded Materials Transition Project to come up with innovative ideas for upcycling, reusing and repurposing its merch.

The team would remove branding on plastic water bottles, metal cups, USB drives and tote bags using paint and nail polish, according to Canadian Business. The transition team collected and dismantled more than 20,000 lanyards, with the metal clips returned to vendors for reuse and the printed parts given to the university’s fashion school for future use. Overall, the team collected more than 24,000 pounds of branded merchandise from 88 departments across the university.

Of the apparel collected, some received patches with the new branding, and some was debranded and donated to charity or to the fashion school. In fact, the university held a fashion show late last year, featuring 27 looks upcycled from defunct Ryerson materials.

Promo ready? Upcycling – where items are transformed into something new and of greater perceived value – is growing in popularity in the promo space. Earlier this year, Botanical PaperWorks (asi/41273) introduced products made from repurposed wooden pallets, and last year, Redwood Classics Apparel (asi/81627) created a collection of handcrafted upcycled bags made from single-use street pole banners from the 2015 Pan Am Games in Toronto. Distributors can also add value to clients by offering upcycling and recycling services during the rebranding process, perhaps enlisting the help of a company like SwagCycle.

Single-Use, But Earth Friendly

GaeaStar uses additive manufacturing to create on-demand single-use products like coffee cups that naturally disintegrate after use.

GaeaStar is trying to solve the single-use plastic waste problem by combining an ancient art with new technology. CEO and founder Sanjeev Mankotia says the idea came when he was traveling in his native India and saw street vendors selling tea in crude handmade terracotta cups known as “kulhars,” which patrons used once and threw away. Kulhars have likely been used in the region for thousands of years, according to GaeaStar, and since they’re made from earth, they’re eco-friendly. Mankotia updated the traditional practice by combining it with additive manufacturing to create single-use products – like coffee cups – on demand from earthen materials like clay that disintegrate naturally without an environmental impact.

The company, founded in 2020, was recently introduced into the U.S. market, thanks to $6.5 million in seed funding. Gaea announced in an Instagram post that it was partnering with Verve Coffee Roasters in California and that coffee drinkers would see its “dirt-cheap solution to single-use plastic” in stores this year.

Promo ready? The promotional products industry has been well situated to take on the problem of single-use plastic, offering products like reusable straws, canvas tote bags and high-quality reusable drinkware. Many suppliers and distributors are also working to repair the industry’s “brandfill” perception problem, offering higher-end, useful and well-made merch that’s meant to be kept, rather than trashed right away. Still, eco-friendly disposables like those offered by GaeaStar could be useful for stocking the food courts of conferences, trade shows and other live events, particularly if there’s a way to add logos without affecting their biodegradability.

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