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Most people don’t think about what happens after their 16-ounce plastic bottle goes into the recycle bin, but Dirtball Fashion does. Their product line focuses on keeping those bottles out of American landfills – "The Earth Day Shirt" - is made out of 65% recycled cotton fiber and 35% recycled post consumer polyester or 2 ½ 16 ounce plastic water bottles, which have been repurposed to create a high-quality polyester blend fabric making the shirt as close a zero waste product as currently possible. The shirt is available in men’s, women’s and youth sizes and proceeds will go to the purchaser’s charity of choice.
“Dirtball Fashion is active, eco, outdoor and American. When you wear Dirtball you make that statement and what better statement can someone make,” said Joe Fox, president, Dirtball Fashion. “There’s no reason not to ‘go green’ with our eco-friendly clothing and products.”
This is merely another product in Dirtball Fashion’s product lineup, which includes T-shirts, hats, knits, moisture management, skate decks and shorts. Coming in fall 2009 is a “water bottle-based” jacket, backpack an organic cotton canvas pant and green manufactured snowboards.
About Dirtball Fashion
Founded in 2008 by Joe Fox, race car driver, entrepreneur and North Carolina native, Dirtball (dirtballfashion.com) strives to make fashionable, eco-friendly clothing for active individuals – cutting across age and gender lines.
Dirtball only uses recycled or organic domestic produced materials in their products when available and all products are designed and produced in the United States the majority within a 250 mile radius of headquarters. Not only does the recycled content add to the ecological-friendliness of the company, but the U.S.-based manufacturing arm adds to the local economy and shortens shipping distances, thereby reducing Dirtball Fashion’s carbon footprint.
Quick Facts on Dirtball Material:
- Each Dirtball T-shirt contains 2 ½ 16oz. water bottles.
- Dirtball’s current short "The Dirt Short" - is made out of 10 16-ounce bottles, which have been repurposed to create a high-quality polyester fabric. The shorts are not only recycled, but recyclable. Once a pair is worn out it can be returned to Dirtball Fashion where it gets sent back to their North Carolina headquarters to be re-spun back into polyester fiber. To thank the customer for their environmental friendliness, the customer will receive 20% off a future on-line purchase. No other clothing company has a recyclable short.
- All shirts printed with water based ink.
- 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.
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joe[.]dirtballfashion.com 
