• by Mark Elis , January 26, 2011

Companies are already making plans for Earth Day. There will be nationwide events and media opportunities to show corporate concern for the environment and their communities. Depending on one's viewpoint, Earth Day will be a PR obligation or a marketing event to show how your product will save lots of trees.

However, Earth Day is also a small but meaningful chance to address a bigger problem, which is the high social cost of cheap apparel. Companies will spend millions of dollars in the next 90 days to print and distribute cheap cotton T-shirts for their employees and sponsored activities. Here is an opportunity for marketing departments to acknowledge the global textile problem without having to make major changes in supply chains, merchandising or pricing.

The cotton T-shirt is everything that is wrong with cheap textiles and everything that is right with how to take a symbolic step to fix the problem. Organic cotton is a better choice, but recycled T-shirts are truly consistent with the spirit of Earth Day and sustainability principles.

The high social cost of low prices is frequently in the news. Major discounters like Wal-Mart exert pressure on their suppliers to cut costs, leading to lower wages at home and abroad. There are also daily stories about the social costs of cheap, unhealthy food resulting in poor nutrition and obesity. We focus on these issues because their symptoms are visible: thin paychecks and fat people.

Cheap unsustainable apparel is less visible but it affects labor, land, water, our consciences and our competitiveness. How can a T-shirt cause so many problems?

One problem is sweatshop labor. Most private label clothing is made in foreign sweatshops under hazardous working conditions. Barely educated workers are paid subsistence wages that often cannot purchase the products they make. Some 250 million children under age 14 in developing countries work in sweatshops. The garments they produce sell for retail prices with well over 50% profit for the manufacturer and retailer.

Also, textile manufacturing is one of the biggest sources of global pollution. The World Bank estimates that almost 20% of the world's industrial water pollution comes from dyes, pesticides and herbicides used to grow, transport and treat cotton textiles. Many of these pollutants cannot be removed from the water. A common statistic is that a single T-shirt made from conventional cotton requires 2,700 liters of water and a third of a pound of chemicals.

Cotton is a water intensive crop, often produced in arid climates of developing countries like Uzbekistan. Given the forecasts of fresh water shortages in these countries, a conventional cotton T-shirt may not be the best medium to commemorate Earth Day.

However, beyond the caution is a real opportunity. Companies will buy hundreds of thousands of cheap cotton T-shirts to make a statement that is better made by the type of shirt they buy than what the shirt says.

Recycled T-shirts can be made of cotton, discarded fabric or plastic water bottles. Recycled PET plastic especially uses American technology, domestic labor and plastic that would otherwise end up in landfills or waterways. They can create jobs, encourage an industry and enable companies to display credibility with little effort.

Socially responsible decisions can be branding opportunities for green consumers and investors. These people are educated, affluent, influential and sensitive to "green-washing." Appealing to greater motivations than price can attract and retain their brand loyalty.

This is not about guilt or compassion. There is real money at stake, and a genuine opportunity for companies to create added value for the cost of a T-shirt.