Sustain Mizzou makes reused T-shirts at potluck dinner

By turning shirts inside out, students put a new spin on old clothes.

By Megan Donohue

Published Oct. 13, 2009

The Anheuser Busch Natural Resources building was open to all students to bring food for a potluck and decorate recycled gold T-shirts from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Sustain Mizzou's first T-shirt project event of the year.

T-Shirt project Co-chairwoman Alysha Baratta said they try to hold two T-shirt projects a year in order to spread their image. They turn yellow T-shirts that aren't going to be used inside out and decorate them.

The room was littered with homemade and store-bought food, paint cups, bottles of paint, brushes, glitter and stencils that said "Sustain Mizzou." Club members, both old and new, were spread around the room decorating inside out yellow T-shirts.

The project upholds Sustain Mizzou's goals of recycling material and encouraging others to do so as well, Baratta said.

"Because they are inside out, it kind of makes people wonder 'What is that? Why are they doing that?'" Baratta said.

Sustain Mizzou also aims to keep production and labor local.

"I guess in a way we are also trying to establish how important it is to locally do things," Baratta said. "For instance, we're really behind local farming and not getting your food shipped from 2,000 miles away and wasting petroleum and oil. Just kind of keeping it within the organization and doing the labor here."

Club member Emily Tewes, who is taking over Stream Team next semester, understands the importance of recycling.

"It's important to take care of the environment, and it's important to take care of where you live," Tewes said.

This is the first semester the T-shirt project and the potluck have occurred simultaneously.

"This is the first semester, though, that we have started to dovetail it with our potlucks, which are also, I think, twice a semester," Baratta said. "Last semester, we just had the T-shirt meeting right before the potluck, and when people came for the potluck, they all started making T-shirts, and we were like, 'Well, OK, we'll just put it all at the same time."

Sustainability Coordinator Steve Burdic said he helps Sustain Mizzou because it's fun, and he believes in what they stand for.

"This one's going to have glitter on it," he said of the T-shirt he was stenciling. "Mainly I come to have fun."

Burdic said he supports the T-shirt project because it's a creative and fun way to showcase the club.

"Well you know when you take a shirt and turn it around inside out and paint stuff on it, you're kind of making a statement about reusing the shirt again," Burdic said. "So it's kind of their badge of honor really, in a lot of ways, that (the participants) are willing to be a little bit different and show their true colors."