Just a couple years ago, a simple organic cotton T-shirt wasn’t so easy to find. Now, with Quicksilver, H&M, and even Forever 21 getting into the green fashion business, eco-friendly T-shirts are a dime a dozen. Still, finding well-fitting and stylish T-shirts made using fair labour can take some work — especially if you’re interested in the latest in eco-friendly and innovative materials and design. Here’s a look at five of the most efficient T-shirts available now:

Revenge Is… a Plastic Bottle T-shirt

The Revenge Is Plastic Bottle T-shirt‘s made of an innovative new fabric — a blend of organic cotton and recycled PET (recycled plastic bottles) — that’s soft, stretchy, and comfortable. A Los Angeles-based company that’s committed to using local labor, Revenge Is prints the company’s eco-angst-y name on the front of each T-shirt. For the back, customers can take their pick of a few progressive messages — i.e. “energy independence” or “taking back our country.” The shirts cost $38 at Revenge Is.

Artevist Community-Designed T-shirt

Threadless fans with a socio-progressive bent can source their outfits at Artevist, a new site that lets designers submit — and members vote on — T-shirt designs with a message. Winning designs — like “Destroy and Deny,” pictured above — get printed on T.S. Designs and Bamboosa T-shirts, all made in the U.S. out of bamboo and organic cotton. T-shirts cost between $27 – $34 at Artevist.

Sub Urban Riot Organic Cotton T-shirt

Sub Urban Riot, a company founded by Pacific Northwest replants who settled in Venice., Calif., offers some unique twists to the regular organic cotton T-shirts, like the extra length and asymmetrical V-neck line in the pink Guns and Roses T-shirt above. The designs often have an ecological message that’s more hip than preachy; they’re available for $14.99 – $39 at Sub Urban Riot and BTC Elements.

Under the Canopy Organic Cotton T-shirt

While Under the Canopy‘s T-shirts are fairly basic, these soft organic cotton tops have the best fit of any T-shirt I’ve ever tried on. Under the Canopy’s use of innovative materials is a topic we’ve written about before here. The T-shirts generally cost $28-$34 at Under the Canopy, but the men’s Vote Ecologically T-shirt‘s on sale for a mere $9.99 at the moment.

Cubist Literature Reclaimed T-shirt

Pre-loved thrift store T-shirts turned inside out + off the wall design + wry slogan = Cubist Literature’s eco-friendly T-shirts. Craig Hunter, who makes these eco-T-shirts, says he likes “the recycling/upcycling factor involved in giving old clothing new life.” Cubist Literature’s upcycled T-shirts are efficient because they avoid the energy-intensive process of re-manufacturing a T-shirt. Plus, since this Etsy store puts the customer directly in touch with the creator-seller, the T-shirts avoid the travel carbon footprint of regular T-shirts. The T-shirts cost between $16 – $35 at Cubist Literature.

A couple other Etsy sellers upcycling pre-loved T-shirts are KMStitchery and devotees.

Merino wool is the most efficient material for cold weather. Merino wool is softer than regular wool, and it feels more like cotton against the skin. Merino wool resists wind and warms better than synthetic materials. It doesn’t absorb odors and it regulates body temperature. It is also produced in a sustainable manner.

The jacket pictured here is the Smartwool Yampa Jacket. It’s designed with a woven wool sueded fabric, and it has a heavy 100% merino wool lining. There is a women’s version of this jacket too. Smartwool sells a whole range merino wool clothing, including summer wear. Merino wool clothing tends to be expensive, but you can find Smartwool at Altrec.

Cocona is a natural fabric enhancer that is made with activated carbon. The activated carbon is derived from coconut husks — it is a “waste” product of the water filter industry. But what does Cocona do exactly? It is said to help traditional fabrics resist moisture, control odor and shield ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Activated carbon has a huge absorbing area — one gram of it has a surface area the size of two tennis court. Some 40 outdoor clothing manufacturers, including GoLite, Marmot, Sierra Designs and Royal Robbins, are incorporating Cocona into their 2007 product lines.

Shown here is a Drimove Zip Top from GoLite that uses Cocona. Outside Magazine gave it a 2007 Green Gear Award. Gregory Haggquist, from the Cocona company, provides a detail explanation of how the product works:

Activated carbon uses the adsorbance process to control odors. Adsorbance is a reversible process dictated by temperature. The activated carbon surface area is full of pores, the sizes of the pores and the size of the adsorbant (odor) dictated the interaction energy between the adsorbant and the adsorbate. The higher the interaction energy the higher the temperature required to desorb the adsorbant.
COCONA uses coconut shell activated carbon. Body odors are molecules such as butyric acid, isovaleric acid, and trimethyl amine. These molecules are all similar in size. The coconut shell activated carbon has pore sizes that are just right to adsorb these molecules at ambient temperatures and desorb these molecules at temperatures found in a washer (hot water cycle) and cloth dryers. We verified this by testing the adsorbance capacity of each COCONA certified fabric. The test determines the adsorbance capacity using butane gas. We ran experimental trials where we saturated a COCONA fabric and then washed and dried the fabric 50 times. We found that the adsorbance capacity slightly increased over the 50 cycles. The capacity increased because more of the pores of the coconut shell carbon became exposed. The reason for this is in the patented process TrapTek uses to make COCONA yarns and fabrics. TrapTek uses a protective layer which coats the carbon during the processing of the yarn. If no protective layer is used when the polyester polymer is melted to be formed into yarn the polyester will fill up the activated carbon. In a sense this deactivates the activated carbon. When the polyester solidifies to form the yarn the carbon pores are filled and covered with polyester never to be exposed. However, in the TrapTek patented process we use a protective layer which covers and protects the pores during the yarn processing and fabric production. The final step in the fabric processing removes this protective layer exposing the activated carbon pores. Further washing continues to remove this protective layer exposing more of the activated carbon pores increasing the adsorbance capacity.