5 sustainability things that Sew-Geek does

Sew-Geek is working on becoming more environmentally friendly. We are taking one step at a time to work on reducing our trash and finding more sustainable ways to produce our merchandise. Hence on this blog, we are showing you 5 sustainability things we do.

1. Our T-shirts

The blank T-shirts we use are made by Bella and Canvas, they are a California-based company that is eco-friendly. They use dye machines that use 7x less water than conventional dye machines and all their water goes thru a filtration system that allows the water to be recycled.
If you want to know more about their Eco-friendly commitment please read their blog post.

2. Printing

By making Items to order, we reduce pre-production and hence the problem of overproduction. We do not print any shirts ahead of time, which means no shirts land in the trash. We do not screen print small orders, hence we don’t use plastisol ink or chemicals to make the screens. For larger orders (over 24 shirts) we do screen print as it is the most efficient way.
We switched almost 95% of our shirt designs from Vinyl to DTF, which uses less ink, and the inks are water-based and environmentally friendly. The only Vinyl we still use is Gold and Holographic.

3. Sublimation for our mugs and car coasters

We use ceramic mugs which can be recycled. No dyes got into the water system as they are contained in a waste tank, which we dispose of at the local recycling center. We only fill one of those tanks every 2-3 years. The same concept as with shirts applies as well, we make our sublimated items to order, so there is no over production. The paper after usage goes into recycling.

4. In-house production

We do almost all of our production in-house. Our house is set at 75 degrees Fahrenheit, which uses less electricity. We also have a newer house that has great insulation. Our house uses eco-friendly light bulbs and I will be changing out the light in my studio soon with ceiling fan end LED lights. I turn my computer off every night to conserve energy as well.
For my Acrylic lasercut Jewelry I try to run the laser in the mornings when it’s not terribly hot, so I do not contribute to heat production in the house as much, the same goes for heat setting T-Shirts. I recycle all leftover acrylic and wood as well. 

5. Packaging

I try as often as possible to recycle the boxes that I already have. I recently switched to recyclable Poly Mailers from Eco Enclose. These mailers are made from 100% recycled LPDE Polyethylene. I buy bubble wrap that is made from recycled materials only for the car coasters. For all other bigger items that need protection, I use craft paper. For my smaller items I use padded craft mailers from Eco Enclose as well. 
As for Package inserts, I try to limit the use of packaging material, which leads to less trash for my customers.

So there you have the 5 sustainability things Sew-Geek has made. More will probably come in the future, but we here at Sew-Geek try every day to reduce our carbon footprint.

Let us know in the comments some of the things you do to help the environment.

As always