An Improvement in Mayday T-Shirts

Every year at Lakeside Middle and High School, we do a special day dedicated to fun activities such as bouncy houses, drinks and student-made stations to bond with classmates and peers: May Day! This year, the Middle School Student Council is collaborating with the high school Student Government to find a sustainable t-shirt company for May Day and other school-wide events that provide students with festive t-shirts. 

Today, I will be talking with Chelsea V.  from the 5/6 student council about their journey and reasoning in finding a sustainable t-shirt company.

Keira: Why are you working to find a sustainable t-shirt company?

Chelsea: We started this project with the thought that lots of clothing is made in places that don’t have the same labor laws as the U.S. These factories often have underpaid children and adults working as cheap labor. In the eyes of these big companies, making money is their number one priority, and the safety and well-being of their employees is lower, if not on the bottom of the list of priorities. We didn't want to support these kinds of companies so we looked into different options.

     Keira: What was the first company you looked into?

Chelsea: The first company we looked at was the Ethical Tee Company as they supported the No Sweat campaign.

[The No Sweat Campaign works to make sure that people who work in clothing industries aren’t working in an environment where they are being overworked for low wages.]

Keira: What led you to find this company?

Chelsea: To be honest, at first it was just a Google search, but as Naomi [S.] and I looked into it more we realized that this could be our solution. We emailed the contact that was listed on the website and asked a couple of questions. We then received a reply that had a lot of valuable information that made Naomi and I believe that this was our solution.

I wonder if there are any other ways to make May Day more sustainable.