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At NUMBSKUL, we subscribe to Karmic law; what we do and how we do it will come back to us in the same manner. The unfortunate reality of the t-shirt business is that, as it has been done traditionally, t-shirts are a very environmentally unfriendly business.
It starts with cotton. Cotton producers around the world use more than 10% of the world’s pesticides and nearly 25% of the world’s insecticides. 1 Five of the top nine pesticides used on cotton in the U.S. are KNOWN cancer-causing chemicals. 2 The production and application of these chemicals is as harmful to farm workers as it is to the environment. So NUMBSKUL will print on organic materials like organic cotton whenever possible.
But organic cotton is not the perfect solution. The other little known fact about cotton is that, not unlike many other crops grown in inappropriate climates, cotton requires massive amounts of water relative to the amount of product produced. It is estimated that 256 gallons of water is required to make one cotton t-shirt. 3 So NUMBSKUL is always on the lookout for more sustainable materials such as hemp and bamboo. We hope to make a lot of progress in this area each year we are in business. Keep an eye out for hemp and bamboo products from NUMBSKUL in the near future.
The screen printing process can also be environmentally unfriendly. Whenever possible we use waterbase ink which is free of most of the environmentally damaging chemicals you can find in traditional ink such as PVC, phthalate, heavy metals, azo compounds, nonylphenol and formaldehyde.
These efforts, which are a function of our values, appear to “cost” more in dollars than ecologically insensitive brands. But that is only because the “true cost” of those other products isn’t paid up front. It gets paid down the road in the form of environmental degradation and health problems for workers. Currently, regulations don’t require apparel manufacturers to capture those external costs in the selling price of the goods. Until they do, NUMBSKUL will appear to be more expensive.
At NUMBSKUL, we subscribe to Karmic law; what we do and how we do it will come back to us in the same manner. The unfortunate reality of the t-shirt business is that, as it has been done traditionally, t-shirts are a very environmentally unfriendly business.
It starts with cotton. Cotton producers around the world use more than 10% of the world’s pesticides and nearly 25% of the world’s insecticides. Five of the top nine pesticides used on cotton in the U.S. are KNOWN cancer-causing chemicals. The production and application of these chemicals is as harmful to farm workers as it is to the environment. So NUMBSKUL will print on organic materials like organic cotton whenever possible.
But organic cotton is not the perfect solution. The other little known fact about cotton is that, not unlike many other crops grown in inappropriate climates, cotton requires massive amounts of water relative to the amount of product produced. It is estimated that 256 gallons of water are required to make one cotton t-shirt. So NUMBSKUL is always on the lookout for more sustainable materials such as hemp and bamboo. We hope to make a lot of progress in this area each year we are in business. Keep an eye out for hemp and bamboo products from NUMBSKUL in the near future.
The screen printing process can also be environmentally unfriendly. Whenever possible we use waterbase ink which is free of most of the environmentally damaging chemicals you can find in traditional ink such as PVC, phthalate, heavy metals, azo compounds, nonylphenol and formaldehyde.
These efforts, which are a function of our values, appear to “cost” more in dollars than ecologically insensitive brands. But that is only because the “true cost” of those other products isn’t paid up front. It gets paid down the road in the form of environmental degradation and health problems for workers. Currently, regulations don’t require apparel manufacturers to capture those external costs in the selling price of the goods. Until they do, NUMBSKUL will appear to be more expensive.
