Green Options

Threadless the t-shirt design site that let’s you upload your designs for a chance to get them printed, announced a totally rad t-shirt contest!

The Green T-Shirt Design Challenge is a chance to show off what being green means to you, all on an organic t-shirt. Says Threadless:

In a move I can only say is very ecopreneural, Vantage is teaming up with distributors like Proforma to offer a full line of 20 plus Earth Day designs ready to be placed onto all nine of their organic cotton t-shirts and totes.

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

Brian Base, the creator of RideSearch.com, was at the Green Dallas event held this last weekend here in Dallas, Texas. Proforma Green runs the t-shirts for RideSearch.com and both RideSearch.com and Proforma Green had been asked to participate in the event by the City of Dallas.

Well Brian was wearing a shirt we ran for him for the 2008 Plano Green Living Expo back in April (another event we both attended as vendors) and I noticed something.

The RideSearch.com shirts are natural cotton shirts. This means they have no dye in them, they are the color of untreated, undyed cotton.

What I noticed was that these shirts fade, although I am not sure fade is the correct word. As I mentioned the natural shirt, whether organic or regular cotton, are called natural because they have no dye in the shirts. So really there is no color (dye) to fade from the shirt, it is just the natural wear of the cotton.

And it seems that over time these shirts go from a sand tan color to more of a lighter parchment color.

I never really thought of it before but because the shirts have no dye in them they just act like what they are, natural cotton, and the “fading” is a result of their nature.

As this is the third post in about 24 hours to mention our friends at Green Living Ideas, you may be thinking we’re on their payroll.  Nope… not sure they can afford us…;-)

Yesterday, Sean let me know about a little giveaway they’re holding, and I immediately agreed to participate.  It’s pretty simple: just register at GLI, and sign up for their excellent GreenIdeas newsletter. Once you’ve done that, submit a comment on this post with your GLI site username (they’ll need to confirm that you did in fact register, and came from sustainablog). In two weeks (that’s October 7th), we’ll pick and announce a winner from those of you who signed up and left a comment here. That winner will receive a Green Living Ideas/sustainablog t-shirt (made of organic cotton, of course!).

Ah yes, the souvenir t-shirt… too silly to wear, but what do you do with it?

I know Leslie’s probably going to be rocking us with recycled t-shirt projects from Generation T for quite some time, but I’ve also been racking up a few t-shirt craft ideas that I wanted to share. (Yes, we seem to have “fads” among the CAGW writers sometimes. First jeans, now t-shirts. Next up: socks?)

Specifically, I’ve been looking for t-shirt crafts that do NOT rely on fusible web. Since I wrote my two-part post a while back on how to think through the “green-ness” of your craft supplies using fusible web as an example, I’ve been less than enthusiastic about ever adhering the yucky stuff to a piece of fabric ever again. (In case you missed it, here’s the part on craft supply safety and the part on craft supply environmental impact.) I have one t-shirt quilt already planned, with the fusible web already purchased, but after that I’m done.

So what to do with cherished t-shirts after that?

To spread the word about the need for meaningful climate action and motivate our elected officials that we need to act now to solve global climate change, Bill McKibben, of Step It Up fame, has stepped it up himself with his new organization 350.org.

350.org is spreading the word far and wide about the importance of the number 350 and you can help! Together with Craftster, Etsy, Craft Magazine, Burda Style and Thrifty Fun — 350.org has launched the Creativity 350 partnership and contest to draw creative energy and attention to 350.org’s goal of reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million to stave off dangerous climate change.

The contest is in two parts; a 350-themed craft contest and a 350-themed T-shirt design contest. For the craft contest, you are invited to craft any project that creatively expresses the importance of the number 350, using any crafting technique. For the T-shirt contest, you may create an original T-shirt design that creatively expresses the importance of the number 350.

Hi everyone!

Do you find yourselves searching for a green holiday gift that’s hip, relevant, and makes a difference in the fight against climate change? Well, look no further than WE ADD UP. WE ADD UP is a brand new global warming awareness project! It’s a global count of people committing to help fight global warming by taking simple steps in their everyday lives that make a big difference. WE ADD UP is an organic [...]

Surf, sun, and fun - the most common things Long Beach, California is known for. Thanks to Wisdom Tees,
we can add another phrase to that list: sustainable style. Many of the
eco-clothing brands like to use shocking images on their apparel to try
and inspire others to act, but Wisdom is different. "We believe that
wearing our Wisdom tees with purely positive and inspiring
affirmations, one will have a clear impact on his or

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Two weeks ago, I lost one of my favorite socks while moving to a new apartment. I'd feel pretty silly about having just a pair of sock being shipped across the country so I kept putting it off. While browsing around my local Whole Foods yesterday, I spotted Maggie's Functional Organics socks in the clothing section (which was next to the vegetables… go figure). Having checked out Maggie's site once or

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