Plant fibres

    According to cottoninc.com there has been a great improvement in the way that cotton is grown with respect to use of pesticides, insecticides specifically, and growers are able to produce 50% more cotton on the same tract of land. Despite this optimism, most other sources still emphasize that even if there is a reduction in the pesticides used in cotton production they are still extremely dangerous to humans and animals. 

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    Cotton covers 2.5% of the world's cultivated land, but uses 16% of the world's insecticides. Furthermore, the second most common insecticide used for cotton is Aldicarb, which has been reported to be mildly to highly hazardous and is present in the groundwater of 16 states in the U.S. ( EJF. (2007). The deadly chemicals in cotton. Environmental Justice Foundation in collaboration with Pesticide Action Network UK: London, UK. ISBN No. 1-904523-10-2.). Also, cotton is considered a very "thirsty" plant, requiring a HUGE amount of water especially in drought times. In fact, recycling cotton saves 20,000 liters of water per kilogram of cotton! That's a lot of water. There is a huge movement toward organic cotton, with growing demand for it from the garment and textile industries. Organic cotton helps lessen the use of pesticides, but it still needs a huge amount of water so recycling cotton is definitely the best way to go.

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Some other plant fibers are bamboo and hemp, which are supposed to be super sustainable. Bamboo is thought to be sustainable because it is a quick growing, highly invasive plant that requires little or no chemicals to thrive. Since bamboo grows so quickly it is a common practice to simply take the soft young pulp from the plant and then to replant the bamboo each year. One problem with this idea is that bamboo still requires a lot of water to grow, and it is not just grown in fields, but a lot of native forests are cut down to obtain the resource. Some valued qualities of bamboo are: the fabric retains the plant's antibacterial nature which is good for controlling body odor, the fabric breathes well, and it is naturally very smooth without the use of chemicals and so rarely produces an allergic reaction. (http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-bamboo-fabric.htm)

http://www.flaxandhemp.bangor.ac.uk/images/large_images/hemp_plants_big.jpg

Hemp is claimed to be extremely sustainable as well, but a majority of websites that sell hemp say that it is from Europe or China so it's energy footprint is quite large due to the distance it must travel to reach its market. Similar to bamboo, no chemicals are required for hemp to thrive as it is a natural weed suppressor, however it does require a significant amount of water still.

I still say bamboo and hemp can't beat recycling fabrics in sustainability if recycling is done in a responsible manner. These crops require too much water while water is a resource that we need to protect.

 

Sustainable hat!

      We're a couple of days into thanksgiving break (boy, am I thankful for that!) and I didn't have a chance to start my sustainable hat while school was going on, but it's going now in full swing! 

I found a great pattern on this website http://knittingpatterncentral.com/directory/hats.php for the "twisted latticed cabled hat" but the gauge (stiches per inch) of the yarn was not quite right for that one so I decided to go with the "winter femme cabled hat" which I'm pretty psyched about because it's quite pretty. I've never knitted in cables before, and it's supposed to be pretty difficult, but it's going pretty well so far. I wouldn't say it's difficult, but it's definitely annoying. 

Photo courtesy of my phone

To create the cable pattern you literally just switch groups of stitches around, and for this specific pattern you have to do it 9 times around when it is a cable row. Very annoying. I'm surviving though, mostly because I hand it off to my sister Ros for the 8 plain rows in between the cable rows. She is a very good sweatshop worker. I pay her in Wheat-thin crackers and grapes.

I originally had intended to find a pattern that uses very little yarn so as to be supremely efficient, but since I recycled the sweater for the yarn I have a lot of it and could probably make approximately 4 of these hats from this sweater(this hat needs less than a sleeve's worth of yarn). Cable knit garments require more material than other simpler patterns because of the way it bunches up. The benefit, though, from using more material and a bunchier pattern is that the garment will be warmer. So if anyone's trying to make really reallyyyyyy efficient hat. . .you might get a little cold out there. I figure that the fact that I'm recycling the yarn offsets the amount that I am using for this hat.

Natural fibres from animals

  When I created this blog, the website name www.sustainablefibers.org was taken (hence my spelling of fibers as "fibres", but nothing wrong with a few British spellings here & there!), but I took a look at their blog to get an idea of what those at Sustainable Fibers thought of the idea of sustainability. Their business is the Texas Fiber Mill, a "source for responsibly raised fine animal fiber products," and so their idea of sustainability is certainly not meant to clothe the whole world. The Texas Fiber Mill intends to provide products to be used for fine crafts, and so if their operation were scaled up to an industrial size the quality and care that they insure at their current size might no longer be sustainable. It might no longer be a profitable operation, and so some of the care that they take in having little effect on the environment may be compromised.

There are several factors to consider in the environmental impact of growing natural fibers from animals' wool.

1. Their eating habits
2. Their wastes' interaction with vegetation
3. The climate they typically live in, and/or the climate that their food grows in
4. How far the fiber must travel from production (and by what means) to reach its market

Some examples of fibers that come from animals are wool from sheep, cashmere from goats, angora from goats, alpaca from alpacas (similar to llamas), and there are many more. The Texas Sheep and Goat Raisers' Association (http://www.tsgra.com/learn.htm)provides some educational pdfs on their website about sheep and goats including their effects on the environment. It's super interesting, and I don't want to cut out too much so here it is straight from the pdf:

" Goats and the Environment

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Because goats will eat just about any type of vegetation, they are increasingly being used to control unwanted vegetation.  Leafy spurge, an exotic species of weed poisonous to many types of animals, is taking over rangeland in many parts of the western United States.  Tall whitetop, also known as perennial pepperweed, is another invasive plant goats are being used to help control. In Texas, landowners are using goats to control brush, particularly cedar.  Cedar re-growth in fields crowds out native grasses and depletes the groundwater supply.  Current research has even determined that certain goats have a genetic preference for cedar.  Goats help to control this re-growth and enhance the amount of water percolating into the ground. By using goats to eat these invasive plants, landowners are helping the environment by removing the plants that are crowding out beneficial species.  In addition, they do not have to use herbicides to kill the plants.  Herbicides are very expensive, so ranchers are also saving money while helping the environment when they don’t have to use them to control noxious brush. Goats can be pastured with sheep and cattle because each species prefers different plants. While they will eat grass, goats prefer brush, tree leaves and rough browse plants.  Cattle and sheep prefer grass.  It has even been shown that when properly rotated, goats can actually improve the palatability of plants for many species of wildlife such as deer."

and sheep too!

" Sheep and the Environment

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Sheep are herbivores, which means they eat plants.  Like most types of grazing animals, sheep will eat many different kinds of plants, which are referred to as forage.  The three types of forage are grass, forbs, and browse.  Browse refers to woody plants and forbs are broad-leafed plants often referred to as weeds.  Sheep prefer eating forbs.  Grass is their second choice, with browse being their least favorite food.  Unlike many other types of grazing animals though, sheep will eat a variety of plants that other animals either won’t eat, or are poisonous to them.   Sheep will eat both grasses and forbs.   Ranchers are constantly moving their flocks of sheep from place to place so they do not damage the land.  This also gives plants a chance to rest and grow again before the sheep are brought back into the same area again.  Because sheep are adapted to arid and semiarid climates, sheep can produce food and fiber by utilizing land that is otherwise unsuitable for any other type of agriculture.   The proper movement of sheep on a range actually makes the land healthier and more productive for plants to grow and for the wildlife that also rely on the range vegetation.  The sheep break up the soil to provide seedbeds for new plants, fertilize the land with their wastes, and help to keep undesirable plant species under control.  By using sheep to help control these undesirable plants, ranchers and other land managers save money because they do not have to use herbicides to do the same job the sheep do for free.  

 In California sheep are used to help prevent wildfires by keeping the firebreaks outside Los Angeles free of invading plants.  In Oregon, Washington, as well as California, sheep are used in new forests to eat the plants that would otherwise tend to crowd out the young conifer seedlings.  Ski resorts in Vermont and Alberta, Canada use sheep to control unwanted vegetation from growing on the ski slopes during the summer months.  Virginia uses sheep to control brush invasions on Civil War battlefields. In North and South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming sheep are used to control a very serious plant pest called leafy spurge.  This plant is toxic to most other animals, kills the plants growing around it, decreases available water, and causes soil erosion.  If left alone, these brushy plant invaders would choke out the native grassy vegetation and cause severe damage to the ecosystems of all those areas." 

http://www.ultimategoatfansite.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/angora-goats.jpg

        I'm not so sure that it is OK to fertilize the land with just letting the waste fall there and not doing anything about it, there must still be some effort involved on the part of the farmer such as possibly burying the waste so that it decomposed IN the soil rather than hang out on top. Also, it sounds like goats' eating habits might be more ecologically friendly than those of sheep because their taste is more for the invasive brush. It seems that as long as the animals are brought to a place to graze where the plants are mostly weeds that need to be cleared and the land needs fertilizing then the animals have a pretty good effect on the environment. HOWEVER, we can't ignore the fact that most cashmere comes from Afghanistan, Iran, Mongolia, India, or China, making it highly unsustainable due to the distance that it has traveled. A fair amount of sheep and angora goats (which are pretty cool looking! see left/above) are raised in the U.S. so depending on the practices of the farm that the wool comes from it might or might not be sustainable. 

Unraveling a sweater: not as easy as it looks!

       One thing to remember with knitting: DON'T BRING SCISSORS ANYWHERE NEAR IT! That will just make a huge mess, and will leave the yarn unraveling all over the place and you won't be able to use the little bits that will result. Now that that's out of the way, when done right unraveling a sweater is pretty darn fun. It's really relaxing, as long as the yarn doesn't break of course. If you are familiar with knitting, which I am thanks to my Nana :) , unraveling a knit item seems simple enough, but I thought I would consult my friend the internet just in case. This is the website that I looked at: http://www.craftleftovers.com/blog/archives/401 and it was fairly helpful, but one thing it did not mention: if the parts of your sweater are sewn together then you actually do have to use a scissor to cut the sewing, and you do need to be supremely extremely careful not to cut the yarn because then you'll just find broken spots when you're knitting and it isn't particularly fun to keep rejoining the yarn.

       It's pretty important to choose an item that isn't too worn out if you're expecting to be able to just re-knit the yarn into your own item. I'm not sure if it is because of my unbelievable strength or the yarn was worn out, but when I was unraveling the sleeve of my sweater the yarn broke in one or two spots. Not to belittle my awesome strength, but it was probably just because the cashmere is really soft and the sweater is used. 

      I chose this sweater because the yarn is thicker than most of the other sweaters I saw, so the project would go faster than with the painfully thin yarns. The knitted parts are sewn together at the shoulders, along the sleeves and down the sides, which made it a little annoying to unravel because the yarn kept getting stuck on the threads, but I guess it turned out fine? You can use any material, but I personally prefer natural fibers because they contain oil whereas unnatural fibers don't and so dry out my hands when I am working with them. And of course cashmere is so freaking soft!

What the heck is "sustainable" in the first place?

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      Before we explore in more detail the sustainability of fibers, we should start with the basic idea of sustainability. This will enable us to get a good look at how widespread the influence of a product or action may be on the planet.

    

      A popular definition of sustainability comes from a 1987 UN conference where it was defined as the ability to "meet present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs."(http://www.arch.wsu.edu/09%20publications/sustain/defnsust.htm). It is important to note that this definition doesn't only have to do with nature, it is about humans' relationship with nature.

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The finite quality of the Earth's resources demands that humans use them responsibly. This requires several practices that haven't been incorporated well enough into the functions of human society: properly processing waste-water so that we may healthfully reincorporate it into the system of usable water; efficiently recycling plastic so that we don't let it sit in landfills and continue using more resources to manufacture more; composting organic waste to create more nutrient-rich soil rather than depleting existing soil, and other such practices that return resources to the Earth.

        When considering how fibers can be sustainable, we must remember that fibers can come from a huge variety of sources. They can come from animals the way wool does, from plants such as cotton or bamboo, from plastics the way acrylic or polyester do,  or from recycled bottles the way Patagonia fleeces do. We must consider the process of obtaining fibers from each source independent from each other before we compare them. Through initial thoughts though, it is clear that each source implies very different environmental impacts from the others. In the coming blog entries I will explore the impacts of each fiber-creation process.

What makes a fiber sustainable?

       The word "sustainable" is pretty big these days, but I think that in some cases people might misunderstand its meaning. I think that fibers can be created in a sustainable manner in different ways depending on what their intended use is: mass-production of clothing or other fabric goods, or fabric or yarn for smaller quantities of handmade goods.

    

   

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Before I get into what makes manufactured fibers sustainable I would like to emphasize that the most sustainable fibers are ones that are recycled (depending on the way they are recycled) because they don't require a significant amount of more resources to be usable. For example, an easy way to recycle yarn is to unravel an old sweater and simply knit it into something else. Along with this blog I decided to design a hat that is the most sustainable hat possible. Before I realized that you can unravel an old sweater, I was trying to figure out which bamboo or cotton or other material was manufactured in the most efficient manner. Then I tried to figure out which hat pattern used the least amount material; I even wondered if knitting the hat with really tight stitches would use noticeably less material! One day, I was having lunch with my sister, and I was explaining this project to her and she said simply "you could also just unravel an old sweater." Et  Voilà! (thanks Ros!)

     

Image courtesy of my phone.

     She helped me find a cashmere sweater in a second hand store ($27!), and cashmere is NOT a sustainable fiber to use brand-new in the United States because most of it comes from Afghanistan, Iran, Mongolia, India or China. The sweater that I found is by Gap and made in Mauritius, so it traveled a long way (likely by air) to get to the U.S., so this is not a sustainably manufactured sweater at all. HOWEVER...it ended up in the second-hand store, and now I'm recycling it! All that I have to do to recycle the yarn is unravel the sweater, so it takes negligible calories to make the yarn reusable. (maybe if I unravel enough sweaters it will add up to a day's worth of exercise?) The sweater was looking pretty tired anyways, so the cashmere will have a better life when it's revamped. I'm super glad that I found the sweater because super soft cashmere is far more fun to work with than bamboo or whatever I would have ended up with. Also, if I were to get brand new yarn from where I am I would have to either order it (adding to its environmental footprint, a big nono!) or bike to a really far away yarn shop, which I don't have time to do. Recycling a sweater is resourceful and convenient!