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Sustainability matters to 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. To learn more about our efforts, take a look at our sustainability timeline.
In addition, to make communicating about your brand’s sustainability efforts easier, we’ve created these free downloadable templates for Printful’s store owners.
The fashion industry needs to make fundamental changes to protect the climate from harm. Our goal is to provide a less wasteful way of production through print-on-demand.
Every purchase, big or small, has a footprint. You choose the size of the mark to leave on the planet, and we want to help you choose wisely. 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.
As of May 2021, we’ve started using post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic packaging for all apparel orders shipped from our in-house facilities. We took this step to minimize our environmental impact as recycled materials save virgin resources and require less energy to produce.
Now we’re increasing the recycled content and gradually switching to 90%–100% post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic packaging all over North America.
We’ve also reduced the use of packaging altogether and introduced triangular cardboard boxes for poster orders to replace tubes with plastic end caps.
Reducing fashion waste is going to be an ongoing process for manufacturers as well as consumers. By choosing products that are made on-demand, you help reduce overproduction waste.
The better the quality, the longer the product lasts. Before we add new products, we do durability tests to make sure they’ll stand the test of time. We work with suppliers that produce high-quality products that last many washes, keeping print colors vibrant and the fabric soft.
To make our product sourcing more transparent, we've added a Source tab to every product in our catalog, which tells you about each item's manufacturer and country of origin.
We offer different ways to customize your designs sustainably. Many of our products are printed with the direct-to-garment (DTG) technique. With DTG, ink is sprayed onto the garment, which helps it soak into the fabric better and makes the print less prone to fading.
Embroidery is also a popular option for eco-friendly products, providing unique, durable designs and a flexible product range to choose from. Embroidered products are more resilient than printed designs and quicker to test since the color of the product won’t affect the end result.
We do our best work together, and it’s worth celebrating and appreciating one another every day.
Since we want our partnerships to match our values, and to clearly communicate them, we’ve published our own Code of Conduct. It serves as guidance on how Printful conducts business and outlines the expectations we have for our suppliers and partners. We’ve also partnered with ethical trade organization Sedex to ensure transparency and help us monitor our supplier compliance. In short, as a company, we aim to improve production sustainability, support employees and communities, combat climate change, and guarantee ethical working standards.
We’re proud to have been involved in several partnerships in Latvia, and we’re actively looking to extend our support to other Printful locations across the world.
We are one of the biggest supporters of Baltic Pride through powering their Diversity shop. All proceeds go to the Association of LGBT and their friends MOZAIKA, the organization behind Baltic Pride. MOZAIKA also supports us with educational materials and guest lectures on diversity topics.
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 what everyday work is like at Printful.
