Dirtball Fashion is a sweet company out of North Carolina that is making some of the most eco-friendly gear out there today.  Unlike some apparel companies that are just trying to make efforts to be eco-friendly, Dirtball Fashion is founded on the concept of striving to make fashionable, eco-friendly clothing.    Dirtball makes its shirts and shorts out of recycled water bottles (shirts are made out of 65% recycled cotton fiber and 35% recycled post consumer polyester, shorts are 100% recycled polyester) and the prints on the shirts include stylish water bottles and other eco-friendly images and messages.

One of the coolest things is that one of the company’s shorts is not only recycled, it’s recyclable.  That’s right.  When the shorts are worn out, they can be returned to Dirtball Fashion where they’ll be re-spun back into polyester fiber. How cool is that?  And if that’s not enough, you actually get rewarded for being a steward of your own environment and recycling the shorts by getting 20% on a future online purchase from Dirtball Fashion.

If you don’t see why you need to help out by buying clothing made of recycled material, here are some facts from Dirtball Fashion’s website that may help convince you:

Each Dirtball T-shirt contains 2 ½ 16oz. water bottles.

2 million plastic bottles are used in the U.S. every 10 minutes.

51 billion plastic bottles go into U.S. landfills every year.

3 billion plastic bottles recycled is the equivalent of saving over half a million barrels of oil and eliminating 400,000 tons of harmful air emissions which contribute to acid rain, global warming and smog.

Recycling pre-consumer cotton helps to keep 5 billion pounds of waste from going into U.S. landfills.

Buy buying fabric made with recycled cotton, you are helping to reduce the effects of insecticides and other chemicals have on our soil, air and water tables.

It takes 1/3 lb of agricultural chemicals to produce 1 cotton t-shirt.

Cotton requires 22,000 liters of water to produce 1 kilogram of cotton lint making it the most fresh water intensive crop in the world.

Cotton uses some 25% of the world?s insecticides, even though it is grown on 2.4% of the world?s land. Cotton consumes 60% of the insecticides applied in the U.S.

Recycled cotton doesn?t take the manual labor or land use that is required for conventionally grown cotton. It takes twice as much land usage to produce the same amount of organic cotton as conventionally grown cotton.

The majority of the organic cotton is produced in Asia and shipped to the U.S. offsetting any environmental benefits due to the transportation resulting carbon footprint.

Some very sobering facts that I was definitely not fully aware of.  As we continually see the effects of pollution around us and see the gradual shortening of the ski season, it’s great to see companies like this that are pushing the envelope in the area of environmentalism.  Kudos Dirtball Fashion.