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We’re working on being kinder to the planet we all share, while still offering high-quality products and helping customers grow their businesses.
We know that sustainability is important: for our customers, our team, and of course, the planet. We also know that all the sustainability challenges in the fashion industry don’t have a quick fix.
As many as 81% of Printful customers we surveyed stated that sustainability is important to their business, so we’re continuously putting our efforts into becoming the sustainable company you want us to be. We value your trust and avoid promises we can’t keep, so we’re taking realistic steps that make a difference based on data. We’re keeping an open mind and a realistic approach, looking at things we can change now, and figuring out what could be improved in the future.
To help you incorporate Printful’s social responsibility and sustainability practices in your brand messaging, feel free to download these visuals and copy templates to place on your website.
Doing the right thing—for the planet and people—is what we’re learning to do as we grow.
Every purchase, big or small, has a footprint. With each purchase, you have a choice. You choose the size of the mark to leave on the planet, and we want to help you choose wisely.
Around 85% of all textiles produced by the fashion industry end up in landfills, making it a major contributor to environmental damage. One in every five garments reaches a landfill without being worn even once. By choosing print-on-demand, you choose apparel that's created only as the order is placed, creating less fabric waste than conventional manufacturing.
Printful products are made using the made-to-order production approach, fulfilling only the items our customers actually want. But we still have a lot to learn and do to make our production process more sustainable.
One of the main ways we’re reducing waste is by improving our packaging, starting with two of our most popular categories: DTG and posters. We used to wrap our DTG single-product orders in an additional plastic mailer. Now, we use only one poly mailer bag to package them.
For posters, we started using triangular boxes to replace tubes with plastic end caps.
As a next step, we’ve started using packaging made of post-consumer recycled plastics for all apparel orders shipped from our in-house facilities.
By making these changes, we’ve saved more than 55,475 lbs (25,163 kgs) of plastic since February 2020. We also donate damaged and returned products to local charities, like the Red Cross, the American Kidney Fund, and Goodwill.
To take care of fabric waste in our Mexico and Charlotte facilities, we’ve partnered with waste management services, such as Geocycle and Martex. In total, we’ve sent 162,886.95 lb (73,884.28 kg) of fabric waste to recycling.
But to reduce waste from being produced in the first place, last year we optimized all-over print product layouts. Previously, all-over-print products generated 42% leftover fabric, but last year we lowered it to 35%. We hope to reduce this even more.
81.8% of Printful orders are delivered in the same region they’re fulfilled. Having fulfillment centers close to our customers is good both for the business and the planet. Strategically located fulfillment centers allow for faster shipping times and lower shipping costs, and it also helps with reducing the CO₂ emissions produced when transporting orders.
Since quality is sustainability, we're dedicated to giving you products that last.
The better the quality, the longer the product lasts. Before we add new products, we do durability, wash, and wear tests to make sure they’ll stand the test of time. Producing long-lasting products means reducing new purchases.
We work with suppliers that produce high-quality products that last many washes, keeping print colors vibrant and the fabric soft. To provide you information about product sourcing or manufacturing, in 2020 we added the product certificates that are available to us—such as GOTS and OEKO-TEX—to all our products that have been certified.
Our eco-friendly product collection consists of items that are made of at least 30% sustainable, recycled, or biodegradable materials.
Since we’re seeing increased demand for eco-friendly products from our customers, we're happy to provide even more conscious fashion choices. Our eco-friendly product collection is growing along with the needs of our customers. In 2020, we've added 10 new eco-friendly products, and plan on adding 20 more in 2021.
A significant part of our products are printed with the direct-to-garment (DTG) technique. With DTG, ink is sprayed onto the garment, which helps it soak better into the fabric and makes the print less prone to fading. To learn more about the difference between DTG and other printing methods, take a look at this article.
For our DTG prints, we use Kornit machines and inks. Kornit uses high-quality, water-based vegan inks that they formulate, test, and produce in their own factories. Kornit inks are non-hazardous, toxin-free, biodegradable, and certified with an OEKO-TEX Eco Passport.
We print our posters with Epson inks that are certified by GreenGuard. For our all-over print products we use Mimaki printers—their inks are also certified with the OEKO-TEX Eco Passport.
We value and celebrate people for who they are and stay committed to creating a work environment that is safe and welcoming for all.
We've created the Printful Green Team—Printfulers from all our facilities dedicated to exploring new and environmentally conscious ways of doing things. They're continuously working on improving our internal recycling system and keeping coworkers informed about best practices. Since late 2020, The Green Team has held recycling training for 30% of our employees, which is now included in our onboarding process. The rest of the Printful team will go through training in 2021.
We’re committed to giving back. Printful’s sponsorship activities focus on supporting informal education methods that help people develop skills to succeed in the age of tech. In Latvia, we host a free annual programming summer school to mentor people interested in IT. After the two-week course, we extend job offers to the best students.
Printful also has a long-term partnership with Junior Achievement Latvia—a non-governmental organization and an expert in business education in Latvian schools. Since 2013, we’ve been welcoming high school students in our Latvia office once a year to show them various job opportunities and realities of everyday work.
We plan on creating new initiatives and activities in other Printful locations.
The journey of becoming more environmentally aware is a long one, and we remain open-minded and welcome customers' suggestions and opinions. We're starting with realistic, tangible goals, and looking ahead to find new ways to improve.
Printful currently has fulfillment centers across the globe that fulfill and ship 287 premium products. There isn’t a single one-size-fits-all packaging solution because different products require different packaging types. However, we’re working on reducing the environmental footprint that comes with our packaging.
Even though the change is going to be gradual, and we’re moving forward one step at a time:
As of May 2021, we started using packaging made of post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastics. PCR plastics are made from items people recycle every day, like plastic bags and bottles. Most of our PCR plastics are made from shopping bags and wrapping films.
We use PCR plastic packaging for all apparel orders shipped from our in-house facilities. The amount of PCR in the packaging differs for each location, but it’s at least 50% for the outside (white or grey) poly mailer bags, and at least 30% for the inside (clear) bags that are used in multi-item shipments.
PCR packaging protects the products just as well as the virgin plastic bags, and they look almost the same. However, choosing PCR over virgin plastics minimizes the environmental impact plastic has on our planet.
We know there’s still a lot to do to reduce our packaging footprint, and we’ll keep exploring greener options in the future.
Discrimination is not accepted at Printful. We’re an equal opportunity workplace and our hiring and employment decisions, including those relating to compensation, benefits, promotions, training and development, discipline, and termination, are made solely on the basis of skills and performance, not on race, color, religion, ancestry, sex, gender identity, national origin, sexual orientation, age, disability, veteran status, or other characteristics.
To pledge our support to the Black Lives Matter movement, we've donated $20,000 to the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).
Our carbon footprint calculations are still in the works, and we’re committed to communicating about our progress and changes.
In 2020, we started calculating our carbon footprint and the total amount of waste our business generates. Since we have 8 facilities, 3 offices, and 3 partner facilities, it’s a lot of math we have to do to calculate the precise numbers, but they’re necessary to make meaningful changes in our production processes.
Our carbon footprint calculation will be based on the whole product journey: from the second the product arrives at Printful’s doorstep, to the moment it reaches the end customer.
Trusted to deliver 35.6M items since 2013
