Eco in Action: TS Designs

This is the final article of three about TS Designs.

Over the last 35 years, a Burlington, NC  company, TS Designs, has created - with boldness, invention, and a bit of dramatic flair - a viable product line, an innovative printing process, and an enterprising approach to altruism that might - as word gets around - redefine the standard of corporate citizenship.

 Home-Grown Organic

In March, a North Carolina manufacturer spun the first yarn from the first - ever - certified organic cotton crop grown in North Carolina. Part of an age-old growing tradition, it's gone on to be knit, cut and sewn into TS Designs' latest manifestation of historic change.  

"We're now in the manufacturing process," Eric Michel, Vice President of Operations, said.

"We expect we'll be able to start delivering printed shirts to customers sometime in June," he said.

The Impossible: Been There, Done That

"The journey of growing organic cotton in North Carolina began about five years ago, when we were told it couldn't be done," said Henry in a recent press release.

"We want[ed] to work with domestic organic cotton producers," he said. "It [wasn't] available. So we're going to places like Pakistan and India to get our organic cotton." (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, 2010) "Most organic cotton is grown overseas, and 50 per cent of North Carolina's cotton gets shipped abroad."

"The global marketplace determines where cotton goes," Henry said. "You don't know if it goes to South America or North Carolina.

We started by making T-shirts from cotton grown in the state with a line called Cotton of the Carolinas,  knowing that eventually we could do the same thing with certified organic cotton grown here."

According to a 2011 CNN Report, TS Designs/Cotton of the Carolinas made 8,500 shirts in 2009, and made 26,000 in 2011.

The Impossible: Doing it Again

"In December, in Nash county, they harvested 40 acres and turned in 25,000 pounds of good quality cotton," Henry said. Two North Carolina farms - Hickory Manor Organics and Parrish Enterprises - harvested the state's first substantial crop of USDA Certified Organic cotton. 

TSD and fellow dirt-to-shirt participant, Mortex, supported the farms in an effort to provide the missing link in their fully-local, transparent supply chain. One aspect of that support was finding a buyer for every single pound. In order to keep it local, TSD hit the street , offering the crop to a few local groups and organizations.

Their goal was to sell enough cotton to make yarn for 3,000 T-shirts. According to the TSD web site, that number would ensure "demand to run a fabric lot...custom made."

"We committed to enough cotton to make about 5,000 shirts, and have pre-sold almost all of them," said Michel.

"It's exciting to see the finished product," Henry said. "To see it, we need to start locally."

The shirts will be "printed with our own, incredibly soft, environmentally-firiendly inks, and dyed with  low impact dyes," the web site said, promoting them as the most sustainable commercially-available shirts on the planet - a piece of history representing "over 700 jobs in NC," the web site said.

"How can people support TSD?  Buy our t-shirts!  We are a custom printed wholesale t-shirt provider that offers the most sustainable t-shirts and the most sustainable t-shirt options.  People can submit a quote from our Web site."  - Eric Henry, president, TS Designs

To purchase individual T-shirts, visit http://store.tsdesigns.com .

Eco in Action: TS Designs

This is the second article of three about TS Designs.   

Over the last 35 years, a Burlington, NC  company, TS Designs, has created - with boldness, invention, and a bit of dramatic flair - a viable product line, an innovative printing process, and an enterprising approach to altruism that might - as word gets around - redefine the standard of corporate citizenship.

TS Designs' Vice President, Eric Henry, spoke with Redress Raleigh about the inspiration behind his  company's green screen printing process.

Rehance

"We want to bring the most sustainable product possible," said Henry.   To do it, TS Designs reduced  their 30-year-old screen printing process to its essence - and rebuilt it,  revising traditional aspects of production to fit a custom-made, eco-friendly technology called Rehance.  

Traditional Process

The screen-printing process generally starts with dyed, blank T-shirts and ends with pictures printed in Plastisol ink. According to the company web site,  "Plastisol inks are opaque,  and sit on top of the fabric. This allows a bright, light design to be printed on a dark shirt."

Plastisol is made with PVC, which contains phthalates and emits dioxins. Both phthalates and dioxins are chemical compounds - phthalates are used to make platicizers and solvents, and certain products are federally regulated to keep  levels low. Once they hit the environment - sometimes by way of a washing machine's wastewater - dioxins climb the chain until they settle  into animal and human fat cells.  They can remain for years.

Integrity through Inventiveness:  Boutique Chemistry 

Like all sustainable, water-based colors, TSD's  signature ink - an original mix, by the way, which includes pigments containing only trace amounts of heavy metals and cellulose-based thickeners  - soaked into the fabric. Any design requiring ink lighter than the shirt itself was difficult to see.

TSD enlisted another local company - Burlington Chemical - to create a solution.

By definition, Rehance is "a water-based printing technology that alters the chemistry of a shirt so that it will not absorb garment-dye.  Its purpose is to allow the printing of water-based inks on a dyed shirt while maintaining color contrast and vibrancy," the site said.

 New Tradition

At TS Designs, the  screen printing process begins with a shirt that isn't dyed, and ends with a breathable, lightweight image on a preshrunk, sustainable T-shirt.

To obtain a white design on a dark piece of fabric, the Rehance process requires an undyed shirt, where a design is screened using Rehance. The shirt is then garment-dyed (dyed post-construction), and the design emerges out of the negative space. The "white print is not a surface coating," the web site said. "It is simply the lack of black dye."

To obtain a light design on a dark piece of fabric, the process again starts with an undyed shirt. This time, the design is printed first with TSD's water-based ink. It's printed a second time with Rehance, then garment-dyed. The ink-and- Rehance design resists the color, remaining bright.    

"It's interesting. Two groups of people like it. Environmentalists like it because eliminating Plastisol eliminates PVC, dioxins, and phthalates.

"Fashion people like it because a print becomes part of the shirt. It doesn't crack or peel, because it's part of the garment," said Henry.

"How can people support TSD?  Buy our t-shirts!  We are a custom printed wholesale t-shirt provider that offers the most sustainable t-shirts and the most sustainable t-shirt options.  People can submit a quote from our Web site."  - Eric Henry, president, TS Designs

To purchase individual T-shirts, visit http://store.tsdesigns.com

To learn more about Rehance, visit http://tsdesigns.com/products/rehance

Eco in Action: TS Designs

 

This is the first article of three about TS Designs.

Think Globally, Act Locally

Over the last 35 years, TS Designs has taken this particular call to ethical action seriously, ensuring its role in today's  international  marketplace.  TS Designs has created - with boldness, invention, and a bit of dramatic flair - a viable product line, an innovative printing process, and an enterprising approach to altruism that might - as word gets around - redefine the standard of corporate citizenship.

People, Profit, Planet

"We have a business model with a triple bottom line," said company President Eric Henry. "People, Profit, Planet.  Every T-shirt we produce has an impact. We want to make sure we're producing a sustainable product."

According to the Web site, the Burlington, NC,  company "strives for social justice, environmental stewardship, and economic prosperity. "

Integrity with Boldness: The (Very) Viable TSD Carolina Brand 

The company offers a number of socially responsible shirts for purchase, including three different in-house brands. The original, TSD Organic, is a rare find - it's one of only a handful of organic T-shirt brands manufactured entirely within the United States.

Another house option, the TSD Recycled brand, is made of "65 percent post-consumer recycled soda bottles, and 35 percent  post-manufacturing recycled cotton scraps," the site said.

In terms of entrepreneurial ingenuity and risk, the TSD Carolinas brand is the ultimate in realization and reward.  This T-shirt is made from cotton grown in North Carolina. It has traveled less than 750 miles within the state of North Carolina. It is sold, here, in North Carolina.  Each shirt is numbered, and each number corresponds with a given harvest year. Consumers can go online, view the paperwork for themselves,  and track the exact path their T-shirt has taken.

TSD calls it "Dirt to Shirt."

"Have you heard of  Cotton of the Carolinas?" Henry asked. ""People want to know where their food comes from.

"Now, you can identify the origin of your apparel."

 Henry, some friends and colleagues and several like-minded local business owners put his  idea into action a few years ago. It was an "experiment with two things entirely foreign to the apparel market: a fully-local supply chain and complete transparency from farm to printed t-shirt, " the site said.

  Annually, TS Designs works with about five other local companies to produce each crop of shirts.  "We asked our partners to help us develop the T-shirt," Henry said. " We wanted to work with people  who were willing to start off small, and who would understand the value of our mission.

"We wanted to work with people who were willing to stay in it for the long haul."

Justice + Stewardship = Prosperity

According to a 2011 CNN report,  TS Designs made 8,500 shirts in 2009, and, in 2011, was predicted to make 26,000. As consumers continue to cultivate increasingly purposeful buying habits, rising labor and transportation costs worldwide are making locally grown and manufactured apparel  more competitive.  

"How can people support TSD?  Buy our t-shirts!  We are a custom printed wholesale t-shirt provider that offers the most sustainable t-shirts and the most sustainable t-shirt options.  People can submit a quote from our Web site."  - Eric Henry, president, TS Designs

To purchase individual T-shirts, visit http://store.tsdesigns.com .