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!