Wooden T Shirt

The first t shirt to be built from wood. And coloured with wood.

$245.00
Size

Model is 6ft 2 / 188cm with a 39 inch / 99cm chest, and wears size Large.

  • Printed with black ink made from wood waste
  • Material made from pulped eucalyptus and seaweed
  • Four way stretch from 100% compostable stretch fibre

The Wooden T Shirt is not the first time we’ve turned to nature to make our clothing. Having already worked with algae, nettles, blueberries, turnips and raw hemp, wood was always going to be on our list. Each t shirt is printed with the cleanest black pigment on Earth made from wood waste – a carbon negative ink that’s been in R&D for 20 years and is now safe enough to be buried in a vegetable garden.

The t shirt isn’t just printed with wood, it’s made from it too. We’ve combined eucalyptus wood pulp sourced from sustainably managed forests with seaweed from Iceland’s North Atlantic Fjords. Naturally the Wooden T Shirt doesn’t feel wooden to wear. It’s soft and comfortable, with a great weight, and wears just like a regular t shirt.

Technical Details

Printed with 100% black wood ink from wood waste
Material made in Portugal: 75% lyocell, 19% SeaCell, 6% compostable elastane
Black wood ink made in the US by Nature Coatings
Soft and breathable
Four way stretch
T shirt weighs 315 grams
Material weighs 230 g/m2
Machine wash inside out at 40°C
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The first t shirt built with wood, and printed with wood

The Wooden T Shirt is made from eucalyptus wood pulp sourced from sustainably managed forests, and printed with wood ink made from waste wood – even down to the labels.

Our wood ink comes from renewable sources

50 million tonnes of wood waste is created in the US alone every year. Instead of chucking it into landfill, leaving it on the side of the road to release carbon into the atmosphere, or burning it in a smokestack, we’ve used a 100% natural process to transform it into a high-performing black pigment.

No trees are burned or cut down to make the ink

The ink is produced through a closed loop, circular system of manufacturing that doesn’t harm the environment. No wood is burned in the process, so there’s no non-renewable emissions involved. Instead, the heat and biogas generated from the manufacturing process is used as a power source.

Turning wood into ink took 20 years of R&D

Established using a grant from the US National Science Foundation, our friends in California spent 20 years in R&D to get to the point where they can make a scalable carbon negative product that’s “safe enough to be buried in a vegetable garden,” in their words.

We added the world’s first 100% compostable stretch fibre

We’ve also blended the pulped eucalyptus and seaweed with a small amount of the world’s first 100% compostable stretch fibre. While the traditional elastane that’s found in most clothing can take up to 200 years to biodegrade, this compostable stretch fibre biodegrades within 6 months, and without releasing any toxins.

The Wooden T Shirt that doesn’t feel wooden

While the t shirt is highly technical to create, you wouldn’t know it just by putting it on. It’s a soft, comfortable t shirt with a great weight, that wears just like a regular t shirt.

Built with carbon capture technology

Once the t shirt has been built and printed, the black wood ink continues to lock in the carbon dioxide that it absorbed when it was alive. And it will do this for 100 years. So the t shirt you’re wearing is storing carbon emissions. This is known as carbon capture technology and it means rather than producing emissions, the Wooden T Shirt does the exact opposite.

Why we’re looking for new ways to make black clothes

The colour black is everywhere. From our phones to our cars to the ink in our pens. But black has a dark side. Every black thing you own is likely to contain carbon black – a pigment derived from petroleum. The way carbon black is made isn’t sustainable. Vast tracts of land called tar sands are stripped of all life and vegetation to extract the heavy petroleum, while the production process creates significant greenhouse gases.

What is carbon black?

Unless you’ve spent your life on a desert island with no clothes and no possessions, you’ll run into carbon black every day. It’s in the ink in your black pen, your black phone case, and the tyres on your car. Carbon black is the pigment that’s used to make black things black. But we don’t question where it comes from because very few people know it’s even there.

Making the colour black hasn’t changed in 100 years

The way carbon black is made hasn’t really changed for over a century. At mass scale the process begins with a fossil fuel like heavy petroleum which is fed into an industrial furnace and allowed to partly combust. This creates a black powder that looks a bit like soot. And this is carbon black. It’s then used to colour everything from inks, to plastics, to rubber, and you’ll find it everywhere on the planet.

Why we’re looking for alternatives to carbon black

There are lots of problems associated with carbon black. The manufacturing process creates greenhouse gasses which are released into the atmosphere. And the heavy petroleum needed to make it comes from places known as oil sands, or tar sands. These are barren areas of our planet that are stripped of all vegetation so that oil can be extracted from the ground. And as ecosystems are eroded more carbon is emitted.

Size + Fit

The Wooden T Shirt is designed with a regular fit.

Size XS S M L XL XXL
Fits chest 83 - 90 91 - 98 99 - 106 107 - 114 115 - 122 123 - 130
Fits waist 71 - 76 76 - 81 81 - 86 86 - 91 91 - 96 96 - 101
Size XS S M L XL XXL
Fits chest 33 - 36 36 - 39 39 - 42 42 - 45 45 - 48 48 - 51
Fits waist 28 - 30 30 - 32 32 - 34 34 - 36 36 - 38 38 - 40