Billie Eilish and her team are helping the music industry tackle waste by recycling unsold concert shirts into new, eco-friendly apparel. For years, merchandise from past tours has piled up in warehouses, often left unused or sent to landfills. Now, thanks to Eilish’s push for sustainability, these shirts are getting a second life.
Universal Music Group’s merchandise branch, Bravado, recently shipped 400,000 unsold shirts from Nashville to Morocco. There, Spanish manufacturer Hallotex will recycle the shirts, turning them into fresh cotton yarn and making new T-shirts. Shirts that can’t be recycled will be shredded and used as housing insulation. After the process, Bravado expects to have about 280,000 new shirts, which will go on sale in Europe later this year.
Eilish and her mother, Maggie Baird, have long supported sustainable touring and merchandise, even urging fans to use reusable water bottles and choose plant-based options at shows. Billie Eilish has also worked with upcycling designers and used nontoxic inks and dyes in her merch collections. She shows videos before concerts to explain these eco-friendly choices—a move that has been well received by her fans.
While sustainable apparel can cost more to make, Eilish’s example has shown fans and other artists why it’s important. Her Quebec concert last year broke local records for merch sales, and her sustainable line sold strongly at Target.
Bravado aims to expand this recycling project across more artists and hopes that, as it grows, the costs will go down. They plan to keep working with companies like Hallotex—and encourage more artists to join the movement—so that sustainable music merchandise becomes the norm, not the exception.
As awareness grows, Eilish’s efforts set an example for the music industry and inspire other stars to rethink how they make and sell merchandise, keeping both fans and the planet in mind.
