I Dress Myself

100% water based inks and everything printed by hand. We think we're the most environmentally friendly screen printer in the UK.

Environmental policy

I Dress Myself is a responsible business and we intend to grow and develop in a sustainable manner. We recognise that our operations have an impact on the environment and are committed to reducing this.

We think that our approach has helped improve our efficiency, the quality of our service, and our relationship with clients. We believe it's helped to grow our business and hope that our progress will inspire other businesses to take a strong ethical and environmental stance too.

We were joint winners of the BEST/Experian East Midlands Green Innovation award, and were also nominated for the Special Award for Innovation in the 2007 Nottingham Creative Business Awards for our work towards reducing our environmental impact.

It is our policy to:

• Use water-based inks that contain no harmful ingredients at all. This also means that we do not use harmful solvents to clean our screens down after printing - they are rinsed out using water.
• We recently purchased a large format film maker, which has much lower ink consumption compared to other large format printers and uses much more environmentally friendly inks than the traditional reprographics film making process.
• Charge proportionately less for organic cotton and bamboo T-shirts to encourage customers to buy these T-shirts and to help minimise the use of harmful pesticides.
• Minimise our use of natural resources such as energy and water wherever possible. We worked with the Environmental Technology Centre at the University of Nottingham to design and build a conveyor dryer with optimum efficiency for drying water based inks. 
• Promote the use of renewable energy.  Although our landlord is tied in to a contract with E-on (one of the worst climate change offenders), we persuaded our landlord to move over to their green tariff electicity deal with us paying the difference. E-on's green tariff matches every unit of electricity used with a unit generated from a renewable wind or hydro source and supplies it back to the national grid. E-on also uses a carbon off-setting scheme. We think that carbon off-setting is unsustainable and look forward to being able to change to a more ethical energy provider as soon as we are able.
• Re-use resources whenever possible rather than dispose of them. We re-use any misprinted T-shirts for test printing and then for rags. We use margarine tubs for mixing and storing ink. Paper is used on both sides and then recycled. The cardboard boxes and packaging we receive is re-used using recycled paper labels. Our compliment slips are printed onto old unwanted postcards, our badges are packaged in screen printed old match boxes and our T-shirt and poster packaging is all made using 100% recycled card.
• Recycle as much as possible. We use a specialist contractor 'Wastecycle' to recycle as much of our waste as possible, as efficiently as possible. 
• Reduce waste. Between June 2008 and June 2009 we reduced our total waste by approximately 43%. 
• Encourage the use of recycled materials and recycling initiatives. Where possible we obtain all our office furniture and printing equipment from recycling initiatives like Nottingham Realcycle or second-hand from e-bay or charity shops. Where possible, any unwanted equipment is sold on e-bay or given away. We pledge to buy recycled paper and card where possible and all our stationary and packaging are made from recycled paper and card.
• Comply with all relevant environmental legislation, regulations and requirements, and stay up-to-date by accessing the NetRegs website run by the Environment Agency, and relevant web pages on the Health and Safety Executive and Business Link websites.
• Consider the impact of our working and personal lives.
• Ensure that existing and potential clients are aware of our environmental aims and credentials by actively promoting these on our website.

Date: 6th July 2006
Last update: 11th November 2010