Led by UMG’s merchandise division Bravado, this initiative is addressing a long-standing problem in the music industry: what to do with leftover tour merch.

Billie Eilish, UMG Upcycle 400,000 Unsold Tour Tees in Morocco

Marrakech – In a powerful move toward sustainability, Billie Eilish and her mother, Maggie Baird, have teamed up with Universal Music Group (UMG) to breathe new life into more than 400,000 unsold concert T-shirts.

The shirts are being shipped to Tangier, Morocco, where Spanish company Hallotex will recycle them into cotton yarn and create over 280,000 new 100% cotton T-shirts for UMG artists’ upcoming European tours. Any shirts deemed unsuitable will be shredded and reused as housing insulation.

For years, UMG’s merchandise division Bravado has stored tons of old T-shirts in a Nashville warehouse — some collecting dust for decades, according to Bravado President Matt Young.

Now, instead of ending up in landfills or being burned, the shirts are headed on a new journey.

These new shirts are set to be used by UMG artists — including Eilish — during their European tour legs this fall.

Shirts that are beyond saving won’t go to waste either — they’ll be shredded and turned into housing insulation.

Baird, a longtime environmental advocate, emphasized the deeper purpose behind the project.

“We are drowning in clothes on this planet, much of which is in landfills, much of which is shipped to other countries to pollute their waters and their land,” she told Fast Company.

“I think we have to be extremely thoughtful about what merch gets put out in the world – why does it exist, how is it made and what happens to it in its second life?”

Rather than simply donating the excess merchandise — which can often still lead to waste or pollution in other parts of the world — this project aims to create a genuine circular system for tour apparel.

It’s a significant step, showing how big players in music can think differently about fashion, waste, and responsibility.

This initiative is part of a broader conversation that Eilish, Baird, and their collaborators are driving about sustainability in the entertainment industry — and it’s one that’s only growing louder.