SUSTAINABILITY AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AT NEW DUDS

ECO FRIENDLY BRANDS

At New Duds we are committed to healthy people and a healthy planet. We have shirts at many price points, but love to offer our favorite brands who have eco friendly fabric content and practices, as well as transparent policies regarding their factories and the folks who make the products. Allmade is a great brand offering recycled polyester content in their tees, as well as paying livable wages to their workers in Haiti and helping to combat the cycle of poverty. Royal Apparel has many USA made shirt options that contain recycled content, organic content, hemp, or bamboo. American Apparel and Econscious also have organic options. Bella + Canvas works hard to reduce water, energy, and fabric waste in their factories. Alternative Apparel uses organic cotton, recycled polyester, low impact dyes, and eco friendly packaging.

REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE

Over the years we have been working on reducing our waste and recycling. We recycle whatever we can with our municipal recycling program. We also collect all the plastic film that comes into our shop, which is historically difficult to recycle. We have partnered with a local company who has a plastic film bailer, where we can drop off our recycling. We are currently looking into textile recycling. We don’t purchase any rags, but instead cut up our test print tees to use as rags around the shop once we cover them in prints.

We recently started a packaging recycling drop off at our shop. We do a fair amount of shipping and fulfillment for our orders. We use paper packing, plastic air puff packing, peanuts, and bubble wrap to safely ship different types of products. If you are local and have any packaging materials like these, you can collect them and drop them off at our shop, 382 Hercules Drive Suite 4, Colchester VT 05446, Monday - Friday, 9-4. This help reduce our shipping costs and give these packaging products a second life.

SOLAR POWERed

Our electricity usage is offset by our Suncommon Community Solar Array (CSA). Members of a CSA use solar credits produced by that array to reduce or eliminate their utility bill. 

waste water filtration

As a part of the screen printing process, we wash a lot of screens! We use and reuse our screens over and over for different designs, this involves removing ink and emulsion to get the screen clean. We use the most environmentally friendly cleaners on the market, which are soy and iodine based and low VOC. Our cleaners are all drain safe, but part of the process can create some pretty thick materials that could go down the drain. We have a sink filtration system to capture and filter these items, so the water that leaves our building isn’t sending solids into our beautiful Lake Champlain.