AuH2O, or Goldwater, as the elemental compound is spelled out, is a clothing company located in New York, New York’s East Village.  Kate Goldwater, owner and designer, opened up shop in May of 2006, fresh out of college.  What makes her blog-worthy you ask?  Take a closer look at her high fashion creations and you will find that they are recycled; 100% original in every way, utilizing clothes that were once damaged, out of style, or just plain old.  Ranging from combination t-shirt/buttondowns for the gentlemen to risque miniskirts for the ladies, AuH2O’s innovations transcend a lot of peoples’ misconceptions about what should be done with your favorite shirt once that hole in the armpit becomes socially unacceptable.  Don’t you dare throw that away.  Create!

Check out Ms. Goldwater’s site for some inspiration: http://www.auh2odesigns.com.

Here is one rad example of The AuH2O Collection.

And you can buy directly from the source on Etsy (an amazing little site where vintage & handmade goods can be bought & sold):  http://www.etsy.com/shop/auh2odesigns.

For those of us who like to Do It Ourselves, I would highly recommend paying a visit to threadbanger.com for step by step tutorials on limitless possibilities for reusing those recyclables.

Take it from me, the starving artist, whose dorm room curtains were once made out of cut up tees and whose feet often tread upon a pair of handmade duct tape flip flops.  (Hey, it’s a conversation piece.)

Peace, love & t-shirts,

Natalie

“Buying local” has been one of the latest pushes in the Green Movement.  As Eric Henry (our beloved President of TS Designs) once said, “Just because you bought that cheeseburger from the McDonald’s down the street from your house does not mean you are buying local.”  Unfortunately, some people still fail to make the distinction between products that are “final destination local” and “of local origin”.

I am personally a grocery snob.  There, I said it.  During the school year, I carpool with my other hippie friends once a month to drive from Elon, NC to Chapel Hill, NC (a forty minute hop, skip, and a jump away) to hit up our nearest Trader Joe’s.  They supply fantastic organic, antibiotic-free, grass-fed, crunchy granola groceries from peanut butter to soy nuggets.  I love Trader Joe’s.  However, with summer in full swing, I’ve been looking to farmer’s markets for my produce runs.

But buyer beware!  Ask the vendors where their goods are from.  It’s very easy to strike up a conversation with a overall-bedecked fellow peddling tomatoes, “Hey there, these tomatoes look lovely, do you grow all of these yourself?”  And you will be met with one of two answers, “Why yes I do,” or “Nope, just shipped these bad boys in from Mexico.”  Having been to a Burlington, NC farmer’s market and receiving the latter of the two responses, I make certain I know exactly what I’m buying, and where it came from.

By becoming a conscientious consumer, you are not only keeping yourself informed of what you’re putting in your body, but also knowing exactly where your dollar is going.  Buying local supports the local economy, your local growers, and your overall well-being.  Not sure where to start your journey to becoming a better buyer in North Carolina?  Keep reading.

SAXAPAHAW RIVER MILL

http://www.rivermillvillage.com/farmers.html

A quaint little town filled with history, fantastic people, and even better food.  On Saturday afternoons, Saxapahaw boasts an incredible Market & Music Series, bringing the best organic goods, crafts, and musical talent to one riverside hill.  Bring your blanket and an empty cooler for an amazing picnic to be contributed to by the Saxapahaw vendors.  Don’t forget to stop by the general store!  (I highly recommend the goat burger.)

GROWING SMALL FARMS: North Carolina Cooperative Extension

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/chatham/ag/SustAg/otherareamarkets.html

This resource contains a plethora of excellent locations all over the Triangle Area to find the farmers market nearest you.  I have explored several of the markets on the list, however my favorite thus far is the Downtown Raleigh site in terms of convenience for me.

WHY BE THE VILLAGE IDIOT WHEN YOU CAN BE A LOCAL HERO?

Peace, love & t-shirts,

Natalie

This isn’t a tree-hugging, crunchy granola meeting for the exclusive Birkenstock-donning population of the University’s campus. DiRosa and her team want to involve everyone, from the engineers to the biologists and from the sociologists to the journalists. The combination of scientific inquiry and artistic creativity opens up a brand new channel for discovery in both the arts and the sciences. Collaborating teams of students in this course will get a chance to critically address and resolve issues in our community with the implementation of their original sustainable artistic solutions.

Science geeks, meet the art freaks. Now go save the world.

…

If you’re wondering who this new mystery contributor to the TS Designs Blog is, I’m Natalie Saragusa.  I’ve recently come on board to this amazing company as an intern for my senior year at Elon University.  People and the planet are two of my greatest passions in life.  I’ve been after this position for months now, and finally get to be a part of the company that can successfully incorporate both of those aspects into its business.  I am a digital art major at Elon, with a particular interest in printing, graphic design, and fashion.  Looks like I found the perfect niche here, huh?

I look forward to sharing TS Design’s amazing story and all that a more sustainable world has to offer with you, bloggers!  Stay tuned.

PEACE LOVE & T-SHIRTS,

Natalie

• Where the shirts were made
• What the shirts were made of
• How they were printed

We’re always striving to push the envelope of sustainability with each of these impacts.  But addressing every one certainly gets expensive, so we always encourage our customers to address what they can afford, and push to continuously improve the footprint of their shirts.

For over a year now, TSD has been committed to only processing orders that meet at least one of the following criteria:

• Made in the US
• Made out of a sustainable fiber
• Printed with low-impact water-based or other PVC/phthalate-free inks

We’re not in this to be the only sustainability-minded printer.  We want to raise the bar in our industry, and the best way to do that in a capitalist society is demand.  If you’re buying t-shirts, whether you buy from TSD or not, consider committing to a process of continuous improvement for your products.  The more demand for a more sustainable product, the more the industry will convert to a more sustainable model.

The REHANCE process is a more environmentally-friendly, higher quality alternative to traditional t-shirt printing methods that is unique to TS Designs.  Before explaining how REHANCE works, it would be helpful to review how the vast majority of textile printing is accomplished.

Traditional Printing

There are two main formats of screenprinting ink – plastisol and waterbased.  A typical screenprinter will take a dyed shirt (which is to say, a shirt that is already a color) and print it with plastisol inks.  Plastisol inks are all-around nasty.  They create a surface coating on the shirt that feels like plastic (surprise!) leaving the fabric covered with an uncomfortable, rubbery print that will eventually crack and peel off the shirt.

These inks also almost always contain PVC and phthalates; the former emits dioxins (a very potent environmental toxin/pollutant) during manufacture/disposal and the latter are known to cause various negative health effects.

Waterbased inks, on the other hand, soak into and become part of the shirt.  They are more permanent, will never crack, peel, or fade, and leave the fabric completely breathable.  They also contain no PVC or phthalates.

So why is most printing performed with plastisol over waterbased inks?  Because in order to print a light color on a dark shirt, a surface coating must be used.

Analogously, consider watercolor paint vs. latex paint.  If you have a black piece of paper and try to paint a light blue watercolor paint on it, the result is less than impressive.  The paint will soak into the paper, but since the paint is translucent and does not sit on top of the paper, no color is perceived.

On the other hand, if you paint that piece of paper with latex paint, a paint that is opaque and will sit on the surface of the paper, the color will be bright and vibrant.  But you’ll also be able to feel that surface coating, and could chip it away with your fingernail if you tried.  This is essentially the same difference between waterbased and plastisol inks.

So while waterbased inks feel better and are more environmentally-friendly, they don’t work well on color shirts.  On the other hand, plastisol is less comfortable and harsher to the environment, but easier to work with and more versatile.

REHANCE is the solution to this problem.

The Solution

The REHANCE process utilizes a specially-formulated waterbased ink that resists dye, which means we must print white shirts and then dye them a color (rather than printing on a shirt that is already a color).

Using our example above, we would take white shirts, print them with the REHANCE chemistry, and then garment dye the shirts black.  The printed ink will essentially ‘seal’ the area it’s printed on and prevent the color from dyeing or staining that area.  As a result, a white print is visible on the shirt.  However, this white print is not a surface coating – it is simply the lack of black dye.

Think of it as using painters tape before painting a wall.  Tape over the area you don’t want to paint, then peel the tape off afterward and voila!  No color.  REHANCE essentially works the same way, except there’s nothing to peel off afterward.

The Specifics

Reactive dyes chemically attach to cellulosic compounds (e.g. cotton) on the molecular level by creating a covalent bond between the dye molecule and the hydroxyl groups of the cellulose molecule.  On the wild off-chance that you have no idea what that means, I’ll explain in a bit more detail.

When I say “hydroxyl groups,” I’m referring to a single oxygen atom bonded to a single hydrogen atom.  In the diagram below of a cotton molecule, the hydroxyl groups are everywhere you see OH.

During the dye process, reactive dyes will bond to these hydroxyl groups to create a permanent color on the shirt.  The chemist who developed REHANCE refers to these hydroxyl groups as “dye sites.”  The REHANCE chemistry bonds to those hydroxyl groups before the dyes have a chance to.  Take away the dye sites in a printed pattern, and no color will bond to the areas printed.

Even Better

So what I’ve just described allows us to achieve a white print on a dark shirt without using a surface coating.  But what if I want, say, a light blue print on a dark shirt?  Never fear!  The REHANCE chemistry can be printed over a waterbased ink to protect that ink from the color the shirt will eventually be dyed.  So first: print ink color, second: print REHANCE over ink color.  From there, it works exactly the same way as described above, except that the fabric has an ink printed on it before the REHANCE chemistry bonds to the dye sites.

If you’re asking yourself “How can ink be printed in the same place as the REHANCE chemistry and they don’t conflict with each other?” then worry not, for I will make all things clear.  Inks, unlike dyes, are affixed to cotton in a completely different way.  Normal inks do not bind to hydroxyl groups, so there is no conflict among the inks and REHANCE chemistry for dye sites.

Advantages

No PVC; no phthalates; no cracking, fading, or peeling; no petroleum products; no rubbery, sticky print across your chest.  Just a completely breathable, permanent, colorful print.  You could even iron the shirt if you were so inclined (though why anyone would iron a t-shirt is beyond me).

It’s also worth noting that REHANCE printing leaves less stuff on the shirt in general.  REHANCE works by stopping stuff from being put on the shirt, whereas plastisol printing adds stuff (ink) on top of the shirt to cover up even more stuff (dye).

Not Discharge

For those familiar with textile printing, it’s important to know that REHANCE is not discharge.  Discharge works by taking an already-dyed shirt and printing zinc formaldehyde sulfoxylate to blast that dye out of the shirt.  Rather than our method, which prevents dye from bonding to the shirt in the first place, discharge uses harsh chemicals to eliminate the color after it’s already affixed to the cotton.

Learn More

REHANCE is the technology that allows us to stop dye from sticking to fabric in a targeted manner.  To learn more about the waterbased inks we use to print the design colors, check out this page.

While we’re all about local business, the problem is that the vast majority of local printers just perform the last step locally.  The cotton of the shirts they print may have been grown and ginned in the US, but chances are that all the other steps of the process – spinning, knitting, finishing, cutting, and sewing – were all done overseas.

Take, for instance, an organization that needs shirts in Asheville (about 200 miles west of us).  There are t-shirt printers located in Asheville, all of whom are 200 miles closer to the customer than we are, but the best case scenario is that these printers are using American Apparel shirts.  AA shirts are made in LA, which means they travel over 2,300 miles to reach the printer (not to mention AA shirts use Pakistani cotton).

That’s roughly analogous to driving down to your local Wendy’s for a nice local burger.  Sure it was cooked locally, but the beef and other ingredients came from who-knows-where.

Our Cotton of the Carolinas t-shirts are made, dirt to shirt, right here in North Carolina.  While we might be 200 miles away from that customer in Asheville, the shirts travel fewer than 750 miles in their journey from farm to printed product.  Tack on the 200 miles from Burlington to Asheville, and you still have a product that’s traveled less than half as much as the best possible product from an Asheville printer.

And our shirts help support over 700 NC jobs in the process.  That local printer might employ 5 people in Asheville, but its shirts are grown, ginned, and spun over 7,000 miles away and knit, finished, cut, and sewn over 2,000 miles away.  CotC shirts are farmed, ginned, spun, knit, finished, cut, sewn, printed, and dyed within 300 miles of Asheville.

In fact, if you’re located within 500 miles of TS Designs, you would be hard-pressed to find a lower transportation footprint or greater nearby job impact in a shirt from any of your local printers.

This isn’t to say that these local printers are doing anything wrong; most don’t have the resources or connections to custom-make their own locally-produced apparel lines.  And the fact is, there are a lot of people out there who don’t give a lick about whether a t-shirt travels 200 or 20,000 miles.  But if you’re in the Southeast and low transportation footprint and local jobs are important to you, look no further than TS Designs and Cotton of the Carolinas for your custom printed t-shirts.

The presentation was held at the BALLE Conference (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies) in Charleston, SC to an audience of over 300 owners and leaders of businesses all promoting locally-sourced products and services.

Here’s the video of the highlights of the presentation.  Stay tuned for the full version coming soon!

Thanks to BALLE for the opportunity to talk about how Cotton of the Carolinas is challenging the status quo in the apparel industry.

Thanks also to Hungry Mind Recordings for the original video footage of the presentation!  Other recordings from the conference are available on their website.

Eric Henry and Tom Sineath with one of the newest additions to TS Designs

(From Eric Henry, TS Designs president)

I have been talking about getting chickens at TS Designs for over a year, well on April 5th we got 7 of them.  Why chickens at a company that prints t-shirts?  A couple of things I have learned on journey to be a more sustainable company, there is no clear path to get there and you have to be the one to take the lead if you want to see positive change.  We started growing veggies at TS Designs a couple of years ago to give our employees access to local, healthy food, inexpensively.  One of the negatives you hear about the local, organic food movement, is that it is only for the higher income folks.  We think company gardens can help fill that gap by giving employees access to this food.  We are able to take advantage of the space that most companies plant grass on and spend the summer mowing.  I have found that chickens can be a key to successful gardening and a very cheap source of protein, via eggs, for our employees.

Chickens give back to the soil what the plants take out.  We have created a chicken area inside the garden area.  We picked a couple of rows that we are not planning to plant in the next 6-12 weeks and use a solar powered electric fence to keep the chickens out of the rest of the garden.  While the chickens are in these rows they scratch and peck out bugs and worms, which aerates the soil along with depositing some great fertilizer.  I am excited about testing out using our organic cotton scraps as the nesting material.  We just redesigned the compost pile that is set right outside of the garden.  I am hoping the chicken manure will help break down the cotton scraps faster, which will come back into the garden as great compost.  So next time you are in the area to buy some of our great t-shirts walk around the corner of our building and introduce yourself to our 7 latest TS employees.

Dow Corning, a multinational corporation specializing in silicone-based technologies came to us because of our close proximity to their location in Greensboro, NC, as well as our environmental interests. We rented them the equipment in our facility as well a production employee so that they could test the inks in a multi print, production environment.

So far, they have completed one day of trials, and we anticipate that there will be more to come in the future as they continue to develop their inks.

The report concluded that it is the consumer of the product that ultimately has the greatest impact on the environment—first by choosing an organic product, and then by washing as little as possible, drip-drying, and not ironing.

So if you have ever wondered what you can do for the environment, you can make informed decisions on how you launder your t-shirts. Here at TS Designs, we recommend you wash your clothes with cold water using environmentally friendly detergents and line-dry. According to the study, the consumer can reduce primary energy consumption by 70 percent by not tumble-drying. It is also important to simply wash less. The study concluded that by halving the amount of times you wash your t-shirt increases the life of the t-shirt by 50%.

If you want to reduce your impact, wear your t-shirt more than once before washing it and limit your use of your clothes dryer. Eric Henry, president of TS Designs said, “We are making a sustainable product, but the consumer in the long run has the greatest influence on the impact to the environment on how they care and dispose of it.”

To read the full report, click here.