Eco-friendly REHANCE™ Printing

by TS Designs

Environmentally conscious consumers love our REHANCE print process. It’s a higher quality, eco-friendly alternative to traditional t-shirt printing methods, and it’s unique to TS Designs.

Did you know there are two main types of screen printing ink onto fabric? Plastisol based (typical) and water-based (eco-friendly).

A typical screen printer will take a pre-dyed shirt (which is to say, a shirt that has color) and print on top of it with plastisol inks. This creates a surface coating that feels like plastic on the shirt and leaves the fabric covered with a rubbery print that’ll eventually crack and peel off the shirt.

At TS Designs, we’ve developed a more environmentally-friendly, higher quality alternative we call the REHANCE process. We leave out the nasty stuff, so there’s no PVC; no phthalates; no cracking, fading, or peeling; no petroleum products; no rubbery, sticky print across your chest. Just a completely breathable, permanent, colorful print. You could even iron the shirt if you were so inclined (though why anyone would iron a t-shirt is beyond us!).

REHANCE is better for the planet — and all of us living on it.

Traditional Screen Printing Compared with REHANCE

Traditional Screen Printing

  • Printed directly on top of pre-dyed shirts.
  • In order to print a light color on a dark shirt, a surface coating is required that sits on top of the fabric.
  • These inks almost always contain PVC and phthalates — the former emits dioxins (a very potent environmental toxin/pollutant) during manufacture and disposal, and the latter contribute to quite a few negative health effects.
  • Plastisol is less comfortable and harsher to the environment, but it’s much easier to work with and more versatile.

REHANCE Screen Printing

  • Prints are made on white shirts prior to being garment dyed and all areas of the design become resistant to dye.
  • Water-based inks soak into and become part of a shirt and are more permanent.
  • Ink will never crack, peel or fade, and they leave the fabric completely breathable.
  • Contains no PVC or phthalates.
  • Shirts are dyed any color after the printing process.
  • Water-based inks feel better and are more environmentally-friendly, but they don’t work well on pre-colored shirts. This is why we print before we dye.

T-Shirts are Printed Prior to Being Garment Dyed

After print and before dye
White ink is barely visible.

After dye
White is enhanced by our beautiful Navy Blue dye color.

The next time you want environmentally sustainable t-shirts, that are one-of-a-kind and made in the US, you can feel secure knowing TS Designs has done the research and taken the steps to make it possible. Join us in helping to make the world a better place to live.

 How REHANCE Works

Since shirt is printed prior to being garment dyed, any white area of the design is barely visible on the shirt. However, unlike with traditional printing, our specially formulated REHANCE white is not a surface coating – it’s simply the lack of dye.

Another way to think of it is to think about using painters tape before painting a wall. Tape over the area you don’t want to paint, then peel the tape off afterward and voila, no color! REHANCE essentially works the same way, except there’s nothing to peel off afterward.

This process leaves less on the shirt in general. While plastisol adds ink on top of a shirt, REHANCE works by keeping dye off the printed area of a shirt.

For those familiar with textile printing, it’s important to know that REHANCE isn’t discharge. Discharge uses harsh chemicals and works by blasting dye out of an already-dyed shirt using zinc formaldehyde sulfoxylate. It simply prevents dye from bonding to the shirt in the first place.