Better Thinking’s Perfect T-Shirt - Their Report Is Almost Here!

It's been a long time in the making, but it’s nearly ready... 'Dyeing for a change: Current conventions and new futures in the textile colour industry', better thinking's report on the impacts of textile dyeing, will be available to download from our blog as of next week. Drop us a line at perfect@betterthinking.co.uk if you want us to tell you when it’s up there.

The Report’s part of our self-initiated challenge to create the world's most socially positive and environmentally responsible t-shirt, and typical of our approach to find out as much as we can about all of the options available to us so we can be sure that every decision has been properly considered. The report simplifies and summarises almost everything we read and found out about all the different ways to colour fabric. It’s been rather complicated: available information has either been thoroughly uninformative, or incredibly scientific (a favourite sentence of ours being ‘although D-fructose would appear to be non-reducing, the structure readily undergoes keto-enol tautomerism’).

But we’ve put all the useful information into terms suitable for non-rocket scientists, highlighting as many issues relating to each method as we could. As always with eco-design, comparing apples with oranges makes it impossible to find a cut-and-dry solution, but at least we’re raising awareness about the impacts and viable alternatives and starting a dialogue with people about the issues.

The report looks at why we need to address the environmental impact of dyes, then goes on to list the impacts, advantages and disadvantages of conventional dyeing techniques and possible alternatives. Other treatments and chemicals used to treat textiles are also covered, and some interesting things we found out are contained in six appendices.

Our hard work paid off though, and we discovered a little-known ancient dyeing method that eliminates the need for those things responsible for the impacts of dyeing: namely scary chemicals, complicated equipment and super-thirsty dye and rinsing cycles. To ensure that the performance of our chosen method lives up to the hype, we'll need to carry out some experiments. So, as of next week, Sarah Murphy, a fashion student at Central St Martin's, will be coming in to work on the project for work experience so expect developments to speed up a bit and keep checking back to see how it's all coming along!

Click here to go to www.betterthinking.co.uk/perfect >>