Here at EOCA we always enjoy hearing about other projects our members are involved in, helping to protect the environment. Recently, we have heard of a great initiative being implemented by Marmot, producing T-shirts while benefiting the communities and environments of Haiti.
Marmot has teamed up with Thread International, a company dedicated to making eco-friendly products and creating jobs in Haiti. Together, they are making great T-shirts that will be available in many different designs and colours in around March 2018.
These T-shirts, made of 50% recycled plastic bottles and 50% reclaimed (recycled) cotton, have created over 1,300 jobs for the locals plus over 3,876 income opportunities. These jobs include: litter picking old plastic bottles from Haiti and the surrounding ocean; sorting, de-labelling and packing the plastic bottles; trucking and shipping the bottles and processing the bottles into flakes at the Haitian-run manufacturing plant.
The amount saved by purchasing one of these T-shirts compared with a normal 100% cotton T-shirt is phenomenal. For one T-shirt: 3 bottles are recycled; 115 gallons of water is saved – enough for a 35 minute shower; 0.07 lbs. of pesticide isn’t used in the growth of new cotton and carbon emission is reduced by 0.67 lbs.
The first of the T-shirts were produced for and sold at the OutDoor tradeshow in Friedrichshafen in Germany this July. There they were sold to enthusiastic visitors to the show. The sale raised €1,250, all of which will be spent by EOCA on conservation projects. A win win win initiative!
To find out more about the positive impact in Haiti, please click HERE.
