Eco Friendly Clothing

Eco Friendly Clothing is where Vinyl Bear began!! Back in 2014 we started up Vinyl Bear by printing on 100% organic cotton T Shirts, we still love printing on these T Shirts, they are not just awesome to the environment but are great quality and mega comfy as well.

As Vinyl Bear has grown we have been able to look into other printing methods and other types of eco friendly clothing and also how else we can help become more of a greener company, for instance our packaging is now plastic free, when we screen print we print with water based eco friendly inks and when printing with vinyl  the raw materials are ecologically inert, do not contain PVC, plasticizers or heavy metals (in accordance with Oeko-Tex® Standard 100 category 1) and are also REACH compliant.

Along with our 100% Organic clothing we also have added other eco friendly clothing into our range including regenerated cotton and recycled plastics.

Every year we work with our clothing manufacturers to make clothing more eco friendly, most of our range is now eco friendly, however we don’t sell eco friendly clothing just because they are eco friendly. We expect all our clothing to be of premium standard and some eco clothing is not up to the high standards that we set ourselves here at Vinyl Bear, in which case we would prefer to offer our customers high quality clothing whether they are eco friendly or not until the time comes when we can hopefully replace them.

Organic Cotton

Organic Cotton T Shirts is where Vinyl Bear started and we are happy to say that all on all of our cotton based products we only use organic cotton, that can be 100% organic cotton or organic cotton mixed with recycled polyester.

So what is Organic Cotton?

Organic Cotton is defined as cotton that is grown organically is subtropical countries from non genetically modified plants, and without the use of any synthetic agricultural chemicals such as fertilizers or pesticides. Its production is supposed to promote and enhance biodiversity and biological cycles.

Why choose Organic Cotton?

Cotton covers 2.5% of the world’s cultivated land but uses 10-16% of the world’s pesticides, more than any other single major crop!!!
All these pesticides (including herbicides, insecticides, and defoliants) which of course eventually pollute the air and surface waters.
Growing Organic Cotton does away with all these nasty chemicals, organic farmers have found ways to create organic cotton to nearly the yields of conventional farmers. Some farmers in the US use composted tea leaves to act as a substitute for pesticides. Research continues to seek new environmentally friendly ways to rid the soil of harmful pesticides. There has even been a study on using certain animal manure, like chickens, to decrease pest population. We love meeting up with our suppliers and finding out the new ways in which they experiment with. One of our favourite stories so far was some farmers had coated their cotton in sugar, this then encouraged ants which took the sugar and left the plants alone and the ants would deter any other insect from nibbling on the cotton. Go Ants!!

A few examples of our organic cotton clothing

Recycled Polyester

Recycled polyester is a fairly new addition to our clothing range, still in its infancy our range of clothing and colours is not up to speed with our organic cotton clothing, however the range does keep growing every year and is slowly becoming the new normailty. In our range now you can find technical Tees, hoodies mixed with organic cotton, and even rucksacks all made from recycled plastic bottles.

What is recycled polyester?

Like traditional polyester, recycled polyester is a man-made fabric produced from synthetic fibers. However, instead of utilizing new materials to craft the fabric (i.e. petroleum), recycled polyester makes use of existing plastic. In many cases, those existing plastics are your old water bottles, which are then processed and magically transformed into our awesome clothing.

Why choose Recycled Polyester?

This soft yet tough fabric is a more sustainable option than its conventional counterpart, but maintains all the properties that made polyester so popular since its inception in the ‘40s. From saving water bottles from a life in a landfill to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it’s a go-to for goods that require high performance durability.

A few examples of how we use recycled polyester

Regenerated Cotton

A small part of our range is produced from recycled cotton, like our regenerated hoodies and tees.

What is regenerated cotton?

When our 100% Organic Cotton T Shirts are on the cutting floor there will always be off cuts which would often be destined to the landfill, now these off cuts are put back into the clothing.

Why choose Regenerated Cotton?

There are many benefits to this method. They are now going to landfill being the obvious one, delve a little bit more and you can start to recognise the other benefits; more cotton doesn’t have to be grown, reducing the amount of CO2 emissions associated with growing cotton, and of course reduces the amount of land needed to grow more cotton; the cotton is already coloured so the off cuts just need to be mashed up enough to turn them back into yarn and doesn’t have to go through colour dyes again, saving a lot of water, dyes etc which can go back into the environment; once they are back into their yarn state they can be mixed with other materials to create a different type of clothing.

A few examples of regenerated cotton clothing

And the rest…

As stated above we are trying our best to make all of our clothing as eco friendly as possible, that however does not mean that we will let our standards slip when it comes to quality. Above all we believe our clothing has to be of premium quality when you purchase our clothing we want them to last and dont want them to be worn just the once and then thrown away.
Not all of our clothing is made from organic cotton or recycled polyester as the quality is not yet there at the standards we would like. Where we cannot offer this product we instead offer premium quality clothing that best fit their purpose and can be worn over and over again. When a more eco friendly clothing can be produced to replace these items, rest assured we will.

A few examples of our premium quality sportswear clothing