Beneficial T's by Patagonia - Wholesale Organic T-Shirts
by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 09.17.05
We wrote about Patagonia quite a number of times: Their storm jacket, common threads recycling, their association with Merrell, their Infurno jacket and their Cord pants made from hemp and post consumer recycled polyester. In the comment section of a recent post, reader fishtoes2000 pointed out that Patagonia has also been making organic t-shirts that they sell wholesale (minimum order is 144, so unless you want lots of t-shirts, you probably won't buy directly from Beneficial T's - to buy individual items, visit Patagonia's store).
From the "about" section of their website:
Beneficial T’s was founded in 1996 as a part of Patagonia’s switch to organic cotton.In the early 1990s, Yvon Chouinard, owner and founder of Patagonia Inc. went on a farm tour of California’s Central Valley. He saw the destruction that conventional cotton farming wrought on the environment. In 1994 he made the decision to switch the entire Patagonia product line to organic cotton.
There were few companies using organic cotton at that time and Patagonia wanted to increase the demand for organic cotton so that more of it was grown. We started a T-shirt division that would produce Patagonia’s T-shirts as well as sell wholesale quantities to any group who wanted organic cotton T-shirts.
Within three years Beneficial T’s became one of the biggest users of organic cotton in the United States. We now convert roughly 500,000 pounds of organic cotton into T-shirts, tote bags and hats each year.
I couldn't find any information on the Beneficial T’s website about the labor that makes the shirts. US-made? Sweatshops? Nigh-sweatshops? The green aspects are nice, but it's not enough if they're exploiting people.
I understand that Patagonia has some of the highest labor standards in the clothing business. They audit factories often and have independent audits done too.
So they contract out the work overseas then? Sigh.
i've been to the patagonia campus-- you can go play volleyball in the middle of the day, or any activity, they even have bells around every building and hwne the surf is up everyone is free to go catch a few waves regardless of what time it is.... (sure, they make up those hours later, but would you mind that??). Not sure where they weave the tees, but i do know that they went out to cotton farmers and guaranteed sales to push them into growing organic cotton-- one of the ways they got the price down! they probably pay the millworkers as well, and equitably as the rest of their highly respected staff (hey where else can you take off a month-- paid-- to go volunteer for the sea sheppards?)