When you think of "Reduce, Re-use, Recycle" you probably first think about you, the consumer. "What can I to reduce my (post-consumer) waste?"So what are manufacturers doing to reduce their (pre-consumer) waste? You know, their scraps.
Like when you're making sugar cookies & roll out the dough & cut out a bunch of little circle cookies, only to be left with a lattice of sugary dough (I love food analogies). So keeping with that, what do you do with that leftover cookie dough? Throw it in a landfill? Of course not. You roll it back up into a ball, flatten it out again, and cut out more cookies! So why on earth would you throw away that waste, especially if you were in the business of selling cookies. That waste could be profit.
So back to T-shirts. What are T-shirt and textile manufacturers doing with their fiber waste?
One solution lies with a company called Sustainable Solutions. The company regenerates post-industrial waste (think, the fabric scraps in a T-shirt manufacturer's garbage bin) into sustainable products and new materials altogether. Yep, that's right. Spinning new fibers from what would normally be shipped off to a land fill, and turning them into new products. Who knows, you may be wearing one of these sustainable tees now. Or sneakers. Or other products.According to an article in TulsaWorld today, Sustainable Solutions, Inc.'s line of SmartStreams products are being bought by some of the world's largest retailers, including Wal-mart.
Some features of the Sustainable Solutions textiles mentioned on their website include: reducing the cost of using virgin materials, can be over-dyed or treated to meet trends, fibers can be spun back into yarns, and reduction in textile waste that causes landfill emissions.T-shirt manufacturers looking for ways to turn their waste in to streams of income, can utilize Sustainable Solutions' SmartStream Management services.
Is anyone out there aware of any T-shirt POD's using this type of recycled material? I can only imagine this will soon be the new standard.
Turning T-shirt waste into new tees and new profits. Imagine that! Sustainability never looked so good.
OK, time for a cookie.
