Fits him to a tee?
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Think about this, sports fans: You purchase a t-shirt bearing a swooshy kind of logo and wear it maybe twenty times in a year. The logo represents a massive company with factories all throughout the so-called Third World...factories that remunerate the oppressed locals roughly mere pennies a day to make clothing that can retail for one hundred times that amount, is using little ol' you as a billboard to advertise their over-priced products and not only are you just doing it without charging them for your advertising services, you actually paid big bucks for the damn shirt.
First suggestion: Go logo-free.
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Can You Wear All Your T-Shirts at Once?
5 Ways to Value a T-Shirt
1. Sweatshop-Made
Paradox: You're wearing your favorite message t-shirt. Maybe it reads "Free Tibet"; maybe it reads "Let's Dismantle Industrial Civilization." But what does it read on the label? Could that radical tee have been manufactured in a sweatshop by prison labor in dangerous work conditions? Did you know that almost 75 percent of the price of a garment made in a sweatshop goes into the pockets of the manufacturer and retailer? That means a whopping $15 of that $20 t-shirt goes gets no where the oppressed workers who made it. Sorta defeats the purpose of a message tee, huh?
2. Union-Made
Look for the union label. Unions help provide a fair wage, workers' benefits, enforcement of environmental rules, and much-needed community. Rachel Cernansky suggests, "Check out resources like Sweatfree.org and see if anyone in your city or state is already working against sweatshops, and join the fight."
3. Organic Roughly 25% of all insecticides used globally each year is used on traditional cotton and 5 of the top 9 pesticides used on cotton in the U.S. (cyanide, dicofol, naled, propargite, and trifluralin) are known cancer-causing chemicals. For those of you scoring at home: To make one conventional cotton-based tee requires a one-third of a pound of pesticides and fertilizers. An organic cotton T-shirt requires zero of the toxic ingredients. That means more than just protection for your body, it also means less chemicals contaminating workers and their water supply. 4. Used Ask yourself: What would Thoreau do? Well, any man who said, "Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes," would clearly opt for a used t-shirt. "The most subversive thing that you can do is buy a used plain-colored T-shirt that doesn't advertise anything," adds Josh Peterson. "That's right. Wear a shirt to protect your body from the elements. That's what they are for." 5. Biodegradable? Shirts of synthetic fibers—made from petrochemicals via a process of refining crude oil—will remain in landfills forever. Thanks to Trigema, the largest t-shirt and sports clothing manufacturer in Germany, you can now wear a biodegradable t-shirt made from 100% cotton and yarn spun with natural paraffin. Trigema also uses longer-lasting dyes specially developed to be biodegradable. So, once you've worn it beyond any possible use, just drop it in the compost bin.
