On my first tour of TS Designs, I was immediately impressed by each and every sustainable innovation on the premises. One of my absolute favorite features, however, is the Garden of Eat’n. This extensive employee-grown garden provides veggies for those of us who spend a few hours per week hoeing, watering, and loving the plants. It is just one more aspect of TS Designs that makes us so incredibly unique. We not only are all about making the very best t-shirt around, but we plug sustainability into all facets of our lives… our faces being one of those extremely important facets.

“Buying local” has been one of the latest pushes in the Green Movement. As Eric Henry (our beloved President of TS Designs) once said, “Just because you bought that cheeseburger from the McDonald’s down the street from your house does not mean you are buying local.” Unfortunately, some people still fail to make the distinction between products that are “final destination local” and “of local origin”.

I am personally a grocery snob. There, I said it. During the school year, I carpool with my other hippie friends once a month to drive from Elon, NC to Chapel Hill, NC (a forty minute hop, skip, and a jump away) to hit up our nearest Trader Joe’s. They supply fantastic organic, antibiotic-free, grass-fed, crunchy granola groceries from peanut butter to soy nuggets. I love Trader Joe’s. However, with summer in full swing, I’ve been looking to farmer’s markets for my produce runs.

But buyer beware! Ask the vendors where their goods are from. It’s very easy to strike up a conversation with a overall-bedecked fellow peddling tomatoes, “Hey there, these tomatoes look lovely, do you grow all of these yourself?” And you will be met with one of two answers, “Why yes I do,” or “Nope, just shipped these bad boys in from Mexico.” Having been to a Burlington, NC farmer’s market and receiving the latter of the two responses, I make certain I know exactly what I’m buying, and where it came from.

By becoming a conscientious consumer, you are not only keeping yourself informed of what you’re putting in your body, but also knowing exactly where your dollar is going. Buying local supports the local economy, your local growers, and your overall well-being. Not sure where to start your journey to becoming a better buyer in North Carolina? Keep reading.

SAXAPAHAW RIVER MILL

http://www.rivermillvillage.com/farmers.html

A quaint little town filled with history, fantastic people, and even better food. On Saturday afternoons, Saxapahaw boasts an incredible Market & Music Series, bringing the best organic goods, crafts, and musical talent to one riverside hill. Bring your blanket and an empty cooler for an amazing picnic to be contributed to by the Saxapahaw vendors. Don’t forget to stop by the general store! (I highly recommend the goat burger.)

GROWING SMALL FARMS: North Carolina Cooperative Extension

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/chatham/ag/SustAg/otherareamarkets.html

This resource contains a plethora of excellent locations all over the Triangle Area to find the farmers market nearest you. I have explored several of the markets on the list, however my favorite thus far is the Downtown Raleigh site in terms of convenience for me.

WHY BE THE VILLAGE IDIOT WHEN YOU CAN BE A LOCAL HERO?

Peace, love & t-shirts,

Natalie

This fall, the Art Department of our local liberal arts college, Elon University, will be working to add an Eco-Art course to its repertoire. A small student research team, led by Professor Samantha DiRosa, aims to create a brand new curriculum set to be introduced in the 2011 spring semester. The class will be centered on the rapid rise in the sustainability movement and its emergent impact on the art world.

This isn’t a tree-hugging, crunchy granola meeting for the exclusive Birkenstock-donning population of the University’s campus. DiRosa and her team want to involve everyone, from the engineers to the biologists and from the sociologists to the journalists. The combination of scientific inquiry and artistic creativity opens up a brand new channel for discovery in both the arts and the sciences. Collaborating teams of students in this course will get a chance to critically address and resolve issues in our community with the implementation of their original sustainable artistic solutions.

Science geeks, meet the art freaks. Now go save the world.

…

If you’re wondering who this new mystery contributor to the TS Designs Blog is, I’m Natalie Saragusa.  I’ve recently come on board to this amazing company as an intern for my senior year at Elon University.  People and the planet are two of my greatest passions in life.  I’ve been after this position for months now, and finally get to be a part of the company that can successfully incorporate both of those aspects into its business.  I am a digital art major at Elon, with a particular interest in printing, graphic design, and fashion.  Looks like I found the perfect niche here, huh?

I look forward to sharing TS Design’s amazing story and all that a more sustainable world has to offer with you, bloggers!  Stay tuned.

PEACE LOVE & T-SHIRTS,

Natalie

We’ve had several conversations with potential customers lately who prefer to do business with the screenprinter in their town because that printer is local.

While we’re all about local business, the problem is that the vast majority of local printers just perform the last step locally. The cotton of the shirts they print may have been grown and ginned in the US, but chances are that all the other steps of the process – spinning, knitting, finishing, cutting, and sewing – were all done overseas.

Take, for instance, an organization that needs shirts in Asheville (about 200 miles west of us). There are t-shirt printers located in Asheville, all of whom are 200 miles closer to the customer than we are, but the best case scenario is that these printers are using American Apparel shirts. AA shirts are made in LA, which means they travel over 2,300 miles to reach the printer (not to mention AA shirts use Pakistani cotton).

That’s roughly analogous to driving down to your local Wendy’s for a nice local burger. Sure it was cooked locally, but the beef and other ingredients came from who-knows-where.

Our Cotton of the Carolinas t-shirts are made, dirt to shirt, right here in North Carolina. While we might be 200 miles away from that customer in Asheville, the shirts travel fewer than 750 miles in their journey from farm to printed product. Tack on the 200 miles from Burlington to Asheville, and you still have a product that’s traveled less than half as much as the best possible product from an Asheville printer.

And our shirts help support over 700 NC jobs in the process. That local printer might employ 5 people in Asheville, but its shirts are grown, ginned, and spun over 7,000 miles away and knit, finished, cut, and sewn over 2,000 miles away. CotC shirts are farmed, ginned, spun, knit, finished, cut, sewn, printed, and dyed within 300 miles of Asheville.

In fact, if you’re located within 500 miles of TS Designs, you would be hard-pressed to find a lower transportation footprint or greater nearby job impact in a shirt from any of your local printers.

This isn’t to say that these local printers are doing anything wrong; most don’t have the resources or connections to custom-make their own locally-produced apparel lines. And the fact is, there are a lot of people out there who don’t give a lick about whether a t-shirt travels 200 or 20,000 miles. But if you’re in the Southeast and low transportation footprint and local jobs are important to you, look no further than TS Designs and Cotton of the Carolinas for your custom printed t-shirts.

Both Tom Sineath and Eric Henry here at TS Designs are committed to reconnecting their employees back to local food. It is better for them, their wallets, and the environment. TSD will be moving ahead with their community garden this year after a successful first year under the management of Glenn Kern. Glenn will be returning, but there will be a lot of changes for this season. This year, instead of volunteering, all employees will be required to work a half hour a week in the garden—they will be paid for their time, of course.

TSD lost the hoop house during a recent windstorm (see photo above), but that opened the door to bring in chickens. Ben Wright from Peacehaven Community Garden and Will Hooker, head of the Permaculture program at NC State, will help with the chicken endeavor. The plan is to start with about six chickens, which will be allowed to graze in the fallow rolls of the garden, contained in a fence, within the fenced garden.

Tom is working on updates to our greenhouse (see photo above), which should be complete by the end of January. After taking a refresher course at the fall conference of Carolina Farm Stewardship in Black Mountain, Eric is planning to dive into heirloom tomatoes this year. Partnering with Weston Monroe from Peacehaven, they will start the seeds next month in the greenhouse.

There will also be other changes in the garden this year, including improvements to the watering system, putting in individually controlled soaker hoses for each row. The deer fence will also be improved. Last year there were continuous issues with sections coming down, deer never got into the garden, but it is just a matter of time if the problem is not corrected. It should be a bumper crop at TSD this summer, come by and have lunch with us!

The folks at Peacehaven Community Farm in Guilford County recently put in a yurt from Blue Ridge Yurts. They are testing the yurt to determine how to best use their land with as light an impact as possible. Some of the future uses for the yurt that they are considering include meeting or office spaces and storage uses.

Our friends at the Abundance Foundation recently completed their “Office of the Future,” a fossil fuel-free workspace. The office runs off of a 510 watt solar array, a 30 watt solar air heater, and they plan on putting in a solar air conditioner for the summer. It was made out of local materials and they also used soy spray insulation and low VOC paints. In the photo above, they are sporting their new red TS Designs shirts on a snowy afternoon in front of their office in Pittsboro, NC.

Dr. Jack Martin recently completed his first semester class from Alamance Community College’s Green certificate program, the first in the state. The program focuses on “Alternative Energy Technology,” and trains students in concepts of environmental sustainability, renewable energy, and wind-solar-hydro power systems. Dr. Jack’s classes were taught in the large conference room at TS Designs.

Sheryl from Twisted Limb Paperworks converted some of our organic cotton scraps to paper. A combination of manila folder folders and the t-shirt scraps were used to create cards. The T-shirt scraps were in the Hollander beater for seven hours before they were broken down enough. Usually, her recycled paper is in this beater for only an hour. Twisted Limb Paperworks sustainably produces handmade 100% recycled paper. Below is a photo of a mold for the paper pulp.

The Downtown Burlington co-op grocery took several hundred pounds of scraps and packed them into the open side of a rolling partition wall, then covered the side with chicken wire to hold the scraps in. The wall is now sound absorbent, drastically improving the acoustic quality of the building.

Tom has been working with 19 students from Professor Will Hooker’s Permaculture Design Studio class at NCSU to develop a landscaping plan for TS Designs. This plan will include a conversion of our landscape to more edible plants like nut and fruit trees, berries, grapes, etc. So far we have built 3 trellises and planted pecan trees, magnolia, choctaw, pawnee, kiwi, and much more. In the photo above, the students are hanging up their designs to be critiqued. Stay tuned for updates on how everything is growing.

Tom has been working with 19 students from Professor Will Hooker’s Permaculture Design Studio class at NCSU to develop a landscaping plan for TS Designs. This plan will include a conversion of our landscape to more edible plants like nut and fruit trees, berries, grapes, etc. So far we have built 3 trellises and planted pecan trees, magnolia, choctaw, pawnee, kiwi, and much more. In the photo above, the students are hanging up their designs to be critiqued. Stay tuned for updates on how everything is growing.

Tom has been working with 19 students from Professor Will Hooker’s Permaculture Design Studio class at NCSU to develop a landscaping plan for TS Designs. This plan will include a conversion of our landscape to more edible plants like nut and fruit trees, berries, grapes, etc. So far we have built 3 trellises and planted pecan trees, magnolia, choctaw, pawnee, kiwi, and much more. In the photo above, the students are hanging up their designs to be critiqued. Stay tuned for updates on how everything is growing.

TS Designs is proud to help sponsor Vote for Land 2009, a $3000 grant program put together by our friends over at Great Outdoor Provisions to aid in the protection of the lands, water, and wildlife of North Carolina.

This year’s winner is the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust. Coastal Land Trust works with the state and other organizations to permanently protect Masonboro Island, the largest undisturbed barrier island along the southern part of North Carolina’s coast and host to a vast array of wildlife.

Envision Smart Green Episode 1 Featurette: TS Designs from Envision Smart Green on Vimeo