Creating a sustainable product....

When creating a new sustainable product, it's best to look at products that are already being used at high consumption rates, created through environmentally toxic and energy wasting means, and try to find ways to lessen all those conditions. The product that I want to "recreate" is the graphic tee. 

This item is important to me because this is the type of apparel that I want to sell one day through my own company. I want to focus on the production of graphic tees because it is not a very sustainable product. Tees are usually made of 100% cotton. To grow the cotton itself takes a lot of energy and chemicals that can be harmful to the environment. To construct the tee itself doesn't take that much energy because of the simplicity of the construction but the most damage is done through the dyeing process. To create the graphics alone uses a lot of dyeing chemicals and water that pollutes the environment. This doesn't even include the dyeing of the tee itself before the graphics are placed. 

I think it's important to research and analyze the ways graphic tees are made today and find alternative, more sustainable ways to produce them and maintain them.

A specific company that specializes in graphic tees is Ed Hardy

Here are a couple of examples of Ed Hardy tees:

As you can see, the prints are very design detailed with multiple colors. By looking at these shirts, you already know that  A LOT of dyeing was used to create those graphics. The black tee itself was listed on the website as 'double-dyed'. These are not very sustainable products already by knowing how much energy dyeing takes and the toxics and waste it creates in the process. Also, these tees are made of 100% cotton, which is the standard in the industry, which means the lifecycle of these tees are relatively short. The consumer will probably get rid of these in a years time and go through many wash cycles as well.

So the objective is: how do we make these tees more sustainable?