Our Carbon Footprint
In creating our product, one of our main targets was to leave the lightest carbon footprint possible. In the end, we had to go with product from some far far places and this was only because they were not available within the Americas.
However, we do honestly believe that when all the factors are combined, our product will leave the lightest possible footprint even when compared to t shirts made from organically grown cotton from the Americas.
Pound for pound, no other t-shirt can say that theirs did not involve land use, high energy and water consumption in dyeing and chemical discharge, even if the chemicals are inert after use.
Our Footprints
Our product starts with a recycled PETE yarn from Shanghai, China, which is shipped to both of our fabric mills, one in Madrid Spain, the other in Rosario La Paz, El Salvador.
The yarn factory in Spain then adds recycled cotton fibres, processed from cotton clippings collected from European clothing factories. This yarn is then sent to North Carolina, USA where it is knitted up into our jersey and fleece fabrics. From there, it gets shipped to Toronto Canada, where it is cut and sewn into new t-shirts.
The yarn factory in El Salvador goes through the same process, only this time, the recycled cotton fibres are gathered from clothing factories in the US. The finished fabrics are sent to out cut and sew facilities in Toronto, Canada.
To keep our own emissions low within our production processes, the various steps of cutting, sewing, printing and packaging is concentrated within a 10 mile radius of the Greater Toronto Area.
*The main waste by-product of our t-shirts is mostly in the clippings that we generate ourselves. We are working out an arrangement with the mill in El Salvador to take all these clippings. The end use here would not be in new Eco t-shirts but in mattress padding and/or car trunk lining.
*Total weight per t-shirt on a mens shirt, size Large
** Distance Travelled. Distances calculated through www.infoplease.com/atlas/calculate-distance.html
***The total weight of fabric in this calculation includes an average of 8% clippings from parts of material too small for us to utilise.
These calculations start from point of the yarn is shipped. Prior carbon emissions would be hard to calculate as the cotton clippings are gathered from different locations.
Energy and Emissions calculations based on informations gathered from www.ghprotocol.org
Explaining metric ton miles per gallon courtesy of www.bts.gov:
Ton-miles is the primary physical measure of freight transportation output. A ton-mile is defined as one ton of freight shipped one mile, and therefore reflects both the volume shipped (tons) and the distance shipped (miles). Ton-miles provides the best single measure of the overall demand for freight transportation services, which in turn reflects the overall level of industrial activity in the economy. There does not presently appear to be any complete, reliable estimate of this basic transportation measure. In addition, a ton-mile measure is necessary in order to construct other measures of transportation system performance, such as energy efficiency and accident, injury, and fatality rates.
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