Building their own “circular economy” has led Teemill to pioneer truly sustainable t-shirt printing in a global, scalable way.
A truckload of clothes is burned or buried in a landfill every second, and slowing the fast fashion industry won’t solve the problem. The founders of Teemill were determined to address this issue. According to their website, “back in 2008, two teenagers in a garden shed had £200 and a belief that t-shirts are simple, should be sustainable, and if that’s not something companies will solve then they’d have to do it themselves.”
Like others in the field of sustainability, they realized that the linear economy was the opposite of sustainable- finite resources combined with massive amounts of waste equals ecological disaster. So they created their own circular economy by receiving their products back at the end of its life in order to recycle it into new products.
Bliss co-founder Ruth can nerd out on third-wave manufacturing and how this “remilled” fabric fits into that model, but we’ll save you that lecture (for now). Instead, check out Teemill co-founder Mart Drake-Knight giving a TEDx talk about building a circular economy.
Teemill also thoughtfully created a platform for people who want to print t-shirts with their own designs and they use the drop-ship method which means that shirts are printed to order and shipped directly to the customer which minimizes wasted inventory. Each shirt’s tag has a QR code that explains how to return the shirt to Teemill when the customer is done with it, so that it can be remilled into a new shirt.
Next time you are thinking of printing shirts for your event, staff or volunteers, check out Teemill! They do offer wholesale prices for customers who want to do a bulk order! Sustainable, high-quality shirts made-to-order… we think it’s tee-riffic!
