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BURLINGTON -- T.S. Designs is in the business of generating green.

Two kinds, in fact.

There are the crisp greenbacks issued by the Federal Reserve and folded into crinkled wallets.

Then there's the other kind -- the intangible eco-friendly lifestyle pursued by executives at the T-shirt printing company.

A tracking solar array draws power from the passing sun.

Compost heaps heat an outdoor greenhouse and provide warmth in the winter.

An office toilet flushes with water collected from the ice machine and air-conditioning condensation.

Conservation is a top-tier goal for the nearly 30-year-old business. Almost every aspect of the company is designed to benefit the environment.

It's an interesting case of lifestyles influencing the business practices of a company that in turn influences lifestyles of customers, vendors, even its own employees.

It's not that workers have to drink the Kool-Aid (in this case, fair-trade coffee that will soon be sweetened with honey produced at an on-site beehive). It's something that took root gradually.

For Travis Clark, screen department supervisor, it started with the organic garden plots available to anyone who wants to till the Alamance County soil. Clark signed up for a plot even though he didn't think he was much of a gardener. Still, he was willing to try, especially if it saved a little cash.

Turns out he's pretty good at it.

His crop regularly includes cucumbers, carrots, peas and watermelons. As the company's corporate mind-set has shifted, Clark's priorities also have changed.

"I definitely look at things differently now than I did 10 years ago," he says. "I don't run my AC when I'm gone; I try to buy organic as much as possible."

Sustainability and conservation are transitioning from buzzwords to viable business practices. T.S. Designs is coasting at the front of that curve.

It's not always easy.

And it wasn't always this way.

The company's executives switched to a triple bottom line -- people, profits and the planet -- after the business nearly went under in the mid-1990s.

The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement did away with the majority of tariffs levied on products traded across the continent and encouraged international trade.

Good news for free trade. Bad news for companies such as T.S. Designs.

Big clients such as Nike, Tommy Hilfiger and Gap switched to lower-cost international printing companies, and within two years, T.S. Designs had lost nearly 90 percent of its workforce.

Financial competition wasn't a possibility. There was no way to undercut prices and turn a profit. But it could become a different kind of company.

Protecting the environment was an ongoing personal priority for CEO Tom Sineath and company president Eric Henry. The company had recycled and used environmentally-friendly light bulbs since the early 1980s.

Now, they had a chance to revolutionize the way they did business.

That's where Sam Moore, an old high school buddy, entered the picture.

In the early 1990s, Moore's company, Burlington Chemical, began work on a new molecular printing process called Rehance. The printing technology makes shirts more durable and eliminates environmentally hazardous plastic materials.

Both companies were dealing with the NAFTA fallout. What began as informal support sessions turned into serious discussions of using Rehance and a triple-bottom-line strategy at T.S. Designs.

The eco-friendly strategy, they hoped, would set them apart from cost-cutting competitors.

"This was an intentional change on their part," Moore says. "These guys literally went years without getting paid and eating up their savings to keep paying for health care and their employees."

In 2006, things finally started to turn around.

Now, T.S. Designs is neither the highest-volume producer nor the lowest-cost provider. It's a newly revamped business trying to create its own niche.

The company is an attractive choice for clients such as Whole Foods and Celebrity Dairy that market eco-friendly lifestyles and bristle at the idea of tacking thousands of miles onto deliveries.

"We're finding 50 percent of people come to us because of our business practices," Henry says. "Profit isn't a dirty word, but profit by itself isn't everything."

The hope is that the triple bottom line forms a circuit. Employees who eat and grow their own food will place less strain on the environment. Healthier employees, in turn, will lead to lower health care costs.

Cristie Holland started working at T.S. Designs in 2000. Since then, her lifestyle has mirrored the environmental shift at her workplace.

"I definitely became more aware as I saw things changing around here," she says.

The company tries to set an example in every facet of its operation.

When company executives moved T.S. Designs to the office park at Willow Springs Lane 17 years ago, a lonely oak tree shaded the four-acre lot. They've since planted more than 100 trees, done away with pesticides and nearly eliminated mowing.

The water-guzzling grass in front of the building is long gone. It has been replaced with sheet mulch, composed of leaves collected by the city each autumn. A natural area in the side yard serves as an employee respite.

A makeover also was ordered for the 16,000-square-foot warehouse. The original lighting system was gutted long ago. Instead of leaving lights ablaze throughout the factory, employees switch on only the bulbs they need, casting shadows across vacant work spaces.

A full-time employee since May, 22-year-old Eric Michel is still getting used to this eco-friendly stuff.

The Elon University graduate interned with the company for several years but said he was more attracted to the location and salary than the green mission.

But sure enough, he has found himself switching to compact fluorescent light bulbs and making an effort to avoid Styrofoam when possible.

"I'm more aware, certainly," he says. "But I still eat a lot of fast food."

Executives at T.S. Designs want to expand their influence beyond daily operations and employee lifestyles. Education is a fast-growing component of the company's mission.

Henry wants to create a sign path along the property to teach visitors about eco-friendly business goals.

Students visit T.S. Designs on field trips.

A project with Central Carolina Community College's sustainable agriculture program will transform a vacant acre into an employee food garden.

The company also is working with N.C. State University to encourage organic cotton growth in North Carolina.

To further educational and business interests, the men plan to install a 65-foot, 1,000-watt wind turbine and hope to have it functioning in a few months.

"It's a toy; it's not going to produce a lot of energy for a business," Henry says. "It's the same as the solar array -- you can't make any economic sense out of it."

But sometimes the message is more important than the substantive impact. Both devices act as a billboard of sorts, advertising the company's eco-friendly objectives and, they hope, attracting like-minded customers.

In the next few months, the company will add another eco-friendly feature that will literally lure people off the highway.

The company will soon join the B100 community trail, a group of 100 percent biodiesel filling stations across North Carolina.

The state already has 10 existing biofuel stations, and this will be the 11th, says Lyle Estill of Piedmont Biofuels.

"There's already a community over there interested in the stuff, wanting the stuff, begging for the stuff," says Estill, whose company will operate the pump.

Henry hopes to attract bands and politicians traveling down the I-40/85 corridor to the biodiesel pump -- anybody with a diesel-powered vehicle, really.

Henry and Sineath see it as yet another way to spread the sustainability message, as well as to promote the company.

"We used to be the fringe, the weird guys," Henry says. "Now, this is becoming mainstream."

Contact Katie Reetz at 691-5091 or kreetz@news-record.com