SUSTAINABILITY

VIDEO SUMMARY:

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Print-on-Demand Sustainability Practices

Today, the fashion industry has become one of the biggest polluters in the world, earning itself fourth place on the list.

 

Becoming sustainable for each of us should no longer be a trend but a necessity. So let’s talk about how textile waste affects our planet and how the Print-on-Demand industry can help pave the way to a more sustainable future.

 

Print-on-Demand is a fulfillment method where products are made (printed, cut, and sewn) only when the customer has ordered them.  This means the Print-on-Demand method can reduce textile waste by only manufacturing products that customers actually order. Since products are fulfilled only after an order is placed, it might take a bit more time for the parcel to arrive, but it’s worth the wait.

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Why is it important for fashion brands to start thinking more sustainably? 

Sustainable fashion is a much-needed counter-culture to fast fashion. It means longer-lasting clothes of a higher quality. Sustainable clothes might be more expensive, but they’re generally more durable and last longer. People tend to part from good quality clothes less often, meaning less goes to waste.

 

LET'S LOOK AT SOME STATISTICS TO BACK THIS ALL UP:

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Textiles in our landfills

The textile industry is one of the most significant manufacturing industries in the world. It follows the fashion industry’s dynamic trend requests, so most textile waste comes from discarded clothing.

 

Stat #1: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that in 2018, the US alone generated 17 million tons of textile waste.

 

Stat #2: In the US, a person throws away an average of 81 pounds of clothes each year. Globally, right now, we’re reaching 101 million tons of waste per year.

 

That’s the equal of a garbage truck full of clothes heading to the landfill sites every second. These textiles then decompose, creating greenhouse gasses and harmful leachates. These contaminated liquids form when rainwater filters through waste and draws out harmful chemicals from the fabrics.

 

Stat #3: The average apparel factory discards or incinerates about 60,000 pounds of usable textiles every single week.

 

Pre-consumer textile waste (or post-industrial waste) generated in factories by fashion companies also end up in landfills. All the unused fabric samples, cut-outs, defective products, and overstock are burned or trashed, never reaching the consumer.

 

Print-on-Demand is also a contributor to this waste as damages and fabric scraps are an unavoidable part of the production process. However, Print-on-Demand businesses can avoid overproduction that makes up most of the pre-consumer waste.

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Burned and barely recycled

Recycling clothes isn’t a simple process. The clothes are often made of complex blends of fibers, plastics, and metals, and contain fixtures and accessories. Sorting clothes for recycling demands a skilled workforce that separates materials by hand. It’s labor-intensive and slow.

 

But this isn’t the only reason why fashion companies burn huge swathes of clothes worth millions of dollars. They also do this either to protect the exclusivity of the brand or to discard “out-of-fashion” apparel.

 

For example, a few years ago a luxury label announced they had burned $30M+ of unsold goods. After facing fierce criticism, they claimed they’d stop burning their products.

 

Although many fashion companies are making an effort to change their ways, the industry shifts too slowly to meet the sustainability requirements our planet desperately needs.
 

Limiting waste

Besides only manufacturing items that people want, Printful is looking for ways to reduce production waste too.

• They donate damaged and returned products to local charities, reducing landfill waste.

• Most of the fabrics they can’t donate are recycled by their waste management service partners.

• By the end of 2020, they sent a total of 206,737 pounds of fabric waste to be recycled.

• In 2020, they started optimizing their all-over print product layouts to avoid producing textile waste from scraps.

 

And they have more plans in the works like introducing new product solutions to reduce fabric waste and optimizing the way they calculate the amount of fabric waste. And there’s so much more that they’ve done and planning to do.

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Transparency

Printful is committed to ensuring ethical and fair-labor practices within their operations and they expect their suppliers to do the same by following their Code of Conduct.

 

They’ve partnered up with Kornit, specialists in direct-to-garment (DTG) printing.  DTG is more sustainable than older apparel printing methods like screen printing. As a result, they use less water (Kornit printers produce almost zero wastewater) and less energy, lowering their carbon footprint. So far, they’ve invested around $42M in state-of-the-art printing equipment.