A band shirt won’t make or break an artist’s bottom line, but it sure can help in the dismal economic landscape that is the indie music industry. At the same time, there is too much clothing on our planet: The fashion industry reportedly causes anywhere between 2 to 10 percent of global carbon emissions, and some experts say that the only solution is to reduce consumption and lower manufacturing. So what’s an eco-conscious musician looking to gas up the van by selling a few T-shirts to do? Like the efforts to make vinyl more sustainable, environmentally friendly merch isn’t going to do a great deal in reversing the ravages of global warming, but it couldn’t hurt either. Producing Earth-friendly merch, however, is more expensive. For many acts barely getting by, choosing between manufacturers can mean the difference between a profitable tour and a not-so-profitable one.
Will your favorite band T-shirt outlive you? The answer, like every aspect of sustainable fashion, is complicated. (In conversations about ethical consumption, “sustainable” often becomes a vague buzzword; here, we mean clothing that has a minimal impact on the environment and is manufactured using ethical labor practices.) A majority of band shirts are made from 100 percent cotton, a naturally occurring and therefore technically biodegradable material, if left untreated. But the production of cotton requires massive amounts of water and land, rendering it environmentally unsustainable. Slightly better is organic cotton, which has a smaller environmental footprint since it is produced without synthetic chemicals. Ultimately, recycled cotton, which is derived from post-consumer or post-industrial waste, is considered to be the most sustainable, but it comes at a higher price point. Then there’s the ink that turns a boring tee into a statement of fan loyalty: water-based or plastic. Both have different environmental footprints, and while water-based might seem like the cleaner option, it can still cause environmental damage if handled and disposed of improperly.
Wading through all of these factors takes time and energy, and the truth is often more complicated than statistics would suggest. Many organizations are guilty of greenwashing, a deceptive marketing practice that prioritizes a sustainable image over concrete commitments. The problem goes beyond advertising: A recent New York Times investigation, for example, found that India’s organic cotton certification process is rife with corruption. None of this is terribly transparent for consumers or musicians.
“We have spent years trying to find a reasonable blank shirt that we feel is actually ethical and never have,” says punk iconoclast Jeff Rosenstock. “They have this WRAP [Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production] certification but the deeper down the rabbit hole you go, the more you see that certification is kind of bullshit.” As the leader of the collective Bomb the Music Industry! in the mid-2000s, Rosenstock consciously rejected the concept of monetizing music and merch. Fans would bring plain T-shirts to shows, and band members would stencil and spray paint their logo for free. “It wasn’t always a shirt,” Rosenstock notes. “To our surprise, several people asked us to tag their cars.” By 2010, Bomb the Music Industry! began selling traditional printed shirts, albeit ones that acknowledged their “cashing in.”
Since then, Rosenstock has produced his shirts with Night Owls, a Houston-based printer that works with water-based ink. The company’s co-founder, Eric Solomon, used to play in the folk-punk band O Pioneers!!! and as a result he is intimately aware of the concessions made by both artists and manufacturers. It’s a constant balancing act of priorities. As Solomon says, “You could get a Gildan 5000 shirt for $5 or $6, or you can get this super-fancy, eco-friendly, recycled plastic shirt for $25.” For the average artist trying to keep their head above water, that $5 is going to be much more appealing.
The responsibility to solve climate change is often framed as a personal imperative, while major corporations and governments continue to prevent large-scale change. This is to say that choosing to sell a 100 percent cotton shirt instead of a recycled one should not inspire eco-guilt. “I don’t think anybody should feel guilty about whether they can [make sustainable merch] if it’s not affordable for them,” explains Japanese Breakfast merch manager Rachel Dispenza. “Being in a band does not guarantee you any money to begin with. You can do as much as you can to make the most environmentally friendly shirt, but if people aren’t willing or able to pay that cost, then you just have a box of T-shirts sitting there. Is that really doing any service to the environment either?”
There are also countless practical issues—which have been exacerbated by the pandemic and the ensuing supply chain crisis—that can interfere with even the best of intentions. “For our most recent tour, we had to switch to a big brand we would never normally use because all our regular options had no stock,” says Christine Mackie, Rosenstock’s partner and manager. Thanks to material shortages and rising shipping costs, old reliables aren’t as dependable. “Price-wise, sustainability was a bit easier for smaller artists before the pandemic,” Dispenza says. “Some of the tri-blend organic shirts have gone up $2 each.”
The reality is you have to be a well-selling artist to do sustainable merch successfully—and even then, you need an abundance of time and resources. Lorde’s 2021 record, Solar Power, celebrated the transformative power of nature. Accordingly, the album’s merchandise attempts to return the Earth’s kindness by working with the Los Angeles-based eco-friendly supplier Everybody.World, which constructs shirts using 100 percent recycled cotton grown in North America and remnants of cotton waste. As a result, the merch prices increased from her last album cycle in 2017: short-sleeve shirts went from $30 to $45, long-sleeves from $45 to $55, and the price of hoodies more than doubled, from $60 to $125. “I know the prices for these garments are a little higher than what you’re used to for my merch,” Lorde wrote in a note. “Your garment is a bit better for the planet than most ‘new’ stuff, and that’s what you’re paying extra for.”
The kinds of top-tier stars with the means to pay (and charge) top dollar for sustainable merch often do little more than sell 100 percent cotton shirts. But some are approaching their environmental impact comprehensively, like Coldplay, who employ extensive sustainability measures, including kinetic floor installations that supposedly convert dancing into energy, and sustainably sourced merch. Ahead of Bon Iver’s 2019 album i,i, noted Tesla owner Justin Vernon joined forces with Ambient Inks, a local Eau Claire, Wisconsin print shop, to create sustainable merch; the 20,000 consciously sourced garments sold that year saved nearly 10 million gallons of water and removed 28,000 plastic bottles from landfills. Avid secondhand shopper Olivia Rodrigo made eco-friendly merch part of her brand as soon as she had clothing to sell. In the past, she included details of each item’s decreased environmental impact on her webstore; a representative for Rodrigo confirmed to Pitchfork that her merchandise continues to prioritize a low-carbon footprint.
In 2019, the 1975’s frontman Matty Healy announced a moratorium on new shirts. Instead, the British band reprinted the design of their latest record, Notes On A Conditional Form—which features a contribution from Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg—onto shirts leftover from previous albums and tours. Fans could also bring old band shirts to that year’s Reading and Leeds festivals and get the new design screen-printed on top. The final product brings to mind Bomb the Music Industry!’s spray-painted shirts and other DIY merch, a unique item that ties a fan and artist together over a shared commitment.
A band tee can be more than a random shirt—it can serve as an object of nostalgia with the power to summon a Proustian reverie of communal listening. Perhaps the evoked memories aren’t your own: a threadbare Gildan tee could be a memento of a distant stranger’s best night ever. These are among the reasons that they tend to have a fruitful second life on the vintage market and are, theoretically, less likely to be tossed out when they become worse for wear. “I have stuff from high school in a bin under my bed because I can’t part with the memories attached to them,” Dispenza says. “At one point this band had to make this merchandise in order to have an extra 20 bucks for gas to get to the next show. It’s a piece of history.”
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