In August 2017 we have made the proud switch to green energy.
Today, the entire Shirtbox operation is running on a 37.5 KW solar system, powering every printer, computer, heat press, you name it, in our building.
On a sunny day, our panels produce up to 250 KW of green power. In a year, we are saving over 35 tonnes of CO2 emissions, which is the equivalent environmental benefit to planting over 110 trees.
As a supplier and printer of blank garments, we are strongly conscious of the environmental impact of the clothing manufacturing industry at large.
While a free market often calls for competitiveness on a price-point level, we focus many of our business relations and communication strategies to make environmentally-friendly alternatives such as organic cotton tees, bamboo shirts and recycled PET polyester fabrics easily accessible and affordable for the general public.
This is why you will find a growing number of garment options in our Eco Clothing online shop category, and smaller mark-ups on some of these to make them available at comparably lower prices.
If you are a little bit familiar with shirt printing, you may now that not all printing techniques are as environmentally friendly as you would like them to be. Especially the traditional screen print (or silk screen printing as it is also known) requires the use of emulsions and chemicals to prepare the screens for printing, and the printing is then usually performed with chemical-based plastisol inks.
We here at Shirtbox are super proud to be using brand new, state-of-the-art printing innovations, to make screen printing an environmentally friendly process and make this available to the general public. Our screen printing screens are made with a digital screen maker, which uses thermal printing technologies to make the print stencils. This process only takes minutes and is completely chemical free.
All of our inks, digital and screen printing inks, are water-based and 100% environmentally friendly certified.
This makes our prints gentle on the environment and of course gentle on your skin.
It’s no secret that a vast majority of clothing is sourced in third world countries such as India, Bangladesh, China and Taiwan, with work conditions way below our western standards.
Fortunately, there are manufacturers in Australia and overseas that enforce strict ethical and social rules in their off-shore clothing factories, such as a minimum wage level, no-child-labour and no-forced-labour policies, healthy & safe work conditions and anti-discrimination policies.
We are proud of our trade relationships with these manufacturers and will continue to push these brands more through our retail channels.
Christian Miller, the founder & owner of Shirtbox, is a passionate conservationist and winner of the “Pride of Australia” Award.
For the past years Christian has used his photo artistic talents to communicate the vulnerability of our environment. As a international multi award-winning nature photographer and film-maker, Christian is involved in multiple world wide and local initiatives, such as Parley For The Oceans, Ocean Alliance, Snotbot, the Cairns Turtle Rehabilitation Centre, Biopixel Oceans Foundation and Citizens Of The Great Barrier Reef.
Shirtbox extends this support in form of donations in kind, supplying merchandise at cost price and providing business services for free.
Contact us if you would like to reach out to any of these organisations to get involved in their initiatives.
When you make your first purchase with us, you will notice that you won’t ever be handed your printed tees in a plastic bag. At least not one that has never been used before. If it’s not a paper bag, we re-use shopping bags, shipping satchels from our suppliers and pre-used cardboard boxes. We do get the odd look for that but that’s okay.
All of our waste produced in house is separated on site into recyclables and general waste and collected separately, a practice that is neither compulsory nor as common as you would wish among Australian businesses.
