We’ve been quietly developing this for a year now and getting more and more excited about it – and now we can finally tell the world.
We’re talking about Saved, Green Thing’s brand new anti-waste T-shirt range.
Remember that T-shirt you wore on a first date that never saw the light of day after the break up? Or the shirt you were wearing in little league when you won the championship match? Or how about that shirt you were given for free at the Drupal Conference in 1998?
Well all of them can now be Saved.
Saved takes old, unfashionable T-shirts that no one loves that are doomed to a landfill fate, adds a bit of imagination and makes them better-than-new, fashionable and T shirts that people can love.
Green Thing is asking anyone and everyone to send it their old unwanted T-shirts. Once they fall into our hands, the Green Thing team washes them, hand-stitches ‘Saved’ lettering onto them, adds a Saved story (saved from bad taste, saved from disrepair, saved from neglect) and in doing so makes each T-shirt a bit more fashionable and a lot more desirable.
More sustainable than your average stylish T-shirts, and more stylish than your average sustainable T-shirts, Saved T shirts sell for £20 and are quite possibly the next big thing. Well we hope so anyway.
Every T-shirt wants to be Saved.
Famous People’s Ts
Even though Saved is a new idea, lots of celebrities think it’s a good idea, so much so that they’ve donated some of their unwanted T-Shirts to Saved (kind of a big deal). The S-list includes Imogen Heap, Marina and the Diamonds, Professor Green, Zandra Rhodes, VV Brown, Chipmunk, Mr Hudson, Example, Prince Cassuis and Lissie – and there are more to come.
For launch we’re giving away Imogen Heap’s Saved T-Shirts in the first of our Random Celebrity Saved Specials, which is basically an overcomplicated way of saying that if you buy a Saved T-shirt, it might just turn out to be one that belonged to a celebrity. In this case, to the brilliant Imogen Heap. So get buying y’all.
Send us your Ts
Do you have a T-shirt that wants to be Saved? If so, you can send your unwanted T-shirts to Green Thing HQ.
Or why not buy a Saved T and send in an old T of your own when you get it? When you buy a Saved T-shirt, it comes in ‘make-ready’ paper saved from print presses and comes with a postage-paid label so you can reuse the packaging and send in one or more of your old unwanted T-shirts back to Green Thing be Saved.
That way, T shirts go out of the Saved Cycle and T shirts go back into the Saved cycle and it’s like the Circle of Life only with T shirts instead of cartoon lions and Elton John songs.
One last thing.
A BIG thank you to everyone who has helped us launch Saved, including those who donated T-shirts, those who manned and womanned the Green Thing festival tents to promote the T-shirts, those who designed the lettering, those who designed the labels, those who designed and produced the brilliant and ingenious packaging, those who wrote, shot, produced, mixed and voiced the marvelous Saved video, those who have tapped celebrity shoulders and asked them to donate their T shirts – and most of all, those who spend thousands of hours spent washing, stitching and folding Saved shirts to make sure each one is unique, loved and ready for a new owner. A massive Green Thing thanks to all.
Katherine Hui is currently the Social site editor at Green Thing, a web-based public service in London that inspires people to lead greener lives through creative content.
Before this, she worked as the Development Manager at Social Innovation Camp, an organization that encourages people to use web and mobile-based technology to mobilise social change. She oversaw 300 ideas submission and helped build 20 prototypes – five of which have gone on to get further funding or investment.
Katherine’s came over to the UK form Canada in 2007 for an MSc program at the London School of Economics. Before arriving in London, she managed a small environmental start-up in Vancouver called the Canadian Climate Change Alliance.
Katherine is football mad. She is a loyal supporter of Arsenal FC, plays for Islington Borough Ladies FC and coaches for Gunners in Islington in her spare time. Her second favourite hobby is kite surfing and she can sometimes be found chasing the wind.
