Why BklynMotors Uses Print on Demand: Sustainability by Design

The fashion industry produces an estimated 92 million tonnes of textile waste every year. Around 85% of all textiles produced end up in landfills. One in five garments made is never worn even once.

Print on demand is a direct response to that problem — and it's how BklynMotors operates.

What Print on Demand Actually Means

Traditional apparel brands operate on speculation: they forecast demand, manufacture thousands of units in advance, warehouse them, and hope they sell. When they don't, the excess goes to discount outlets, liquidators, or landfills. The overproduction is baked into the model.

BklynMotors works differently. Every tee is produced after an order is placed — not before. There is no warehouse of unsold inventory. There is no overproduction. If a design doesn't sell, no garments were made for it. The waste is effectively zero.

We shifted to this model during the pandemic and haven't looked back. It's cleaner, more efficient, and more honest about how much product actually needs to exist in the world.

The Environmental Math

The benefits of print on demand go beyond avoiding overstock:

• No warehouse footprint — storage facilities consume energy, require climate control, and generate ongoing emissions. We don't have one.
• No unsold inventory waste — every garment that gets produced has a confirmed buyer. Nothing ends up in a landfill because demand was misjudged.
• DTG printing uses minimal water — direct-to-garment printing technology uses significantly less water than traditional screen printing, which requires large water-intensive washout processes for each color.
• Energy-efficient printing — our printing partners use modern DTG equipment that consumes less energy per garment than conventional industrial printers.

Quality Extends the Life of the Product

Sustainability isn't just about how a product is made — it's about how long it lasts. A cheap tee that falls apart after 10 washes will be replaced. A quality tee on Airlume combed and ring-spun cotton, printed with DTG ink that bonds to the fiber rather than sitting on top of it, gets worn for years.

Durability is part of the environmental equation. We build for longevity deliberately.

The Short Version

We make what gets ordered. We use quality materials. We print with technology that minimizes waste and energy consumption. We're doing our part — building a brand that doesn't need to exploit the planet to operate.