5 ms·

There is not a single sustainable winter clothing manufacturer as far as I can tell. Rayon, hemp, and linen are sustainable but I have not found any warm clothi

by drewm1980 4y ago

There is not a single sustainable winter clothing manufacturer as far as I can tell. Rayon, hemp, and linen are sustainable but I have not found any warm clothing made of them. (Cotton requires a lot of water and organic cotton even more so because the yield is lower)

prmoustache 4y ago
I am using merino wool. That is the closest thing to sustainable I could think of as the same sheeps will produce it every year.
- jgraham 4y ago
  Unfortunately that's probably not true (and I say that as someone who has some much-loved merino clothes). The problem with animals like sheep is that they take up a huge amount of land, both directly grazing and for any additional feed that they require. The more intensively you farm them, the more ecosystem damage they do, but of course less intensive grazing either requires more land or reduces production and increases prices. I couldn't quickly find any numbers to compare to other materials like cotton, but at least for food production, grazing animals are an order of magnitude worse on this metric than any plant-based crops (e.g. [1]). The reason that land usage is bad is because it's zero sum: land that's being used for farming is likely to be less good at trapping carbon than other possible uses of the same land (e.g. reforestation), and is typically not very good habitat for wildlife (sheep in particular selectively graze on the tastiest plants and so tend to leave behind a monoculture of rough grasses which are their least favourite food). If you have to buy new clothes today, I don't really know what the best option is. Plastic-based fibres obviously require oil (although many are based on recycled plastics) and end up creating microplastic pollution and waste products that won't biodegrade. Cotton is very land intensive to produce, but I suspect wool is even worse. Maybe destroying land in the tropics is worse for biodiversity than grazing sheep in temperate regions (similar to palm oil being land efficient, but damaging to rainforests in particular)? In any case I don't know of a simple way to weigh these tradeoffs. The only thing that seems unambiguously like a win is buying fewer clothes and making them last longer. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-per-kg-poore https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-per-kg-poore
  - _visgean 4y ago
    Here in UK most sheeps are in places where they have been for hundred if not thousand years. I agree its bad to deforest new areas for sheep grazing but that is not happening here.
  - prmoustache 4y ago
    Sustainability is a subjective thing. If we consider the actual direction we are going: i.e. ever increasing world population, nothing is really sustainable in the long term anyway. But yes I agree that our worst enemy is fashion and the trend towards replacing perfectly working things with newer ones just for the sake of it.
  - is_true 4y ago
    Sheep can live in places were most crops/animals can't
jolmg 4y ago
Smartwool? https://www.smartwool.com/what-matters.html#/smartwool/zqrx-regenerative-merino-wool https://www.smartwool.com/what-matters.html#/smartwool/zqrx-... I just noticed them today. Don't really know much about them.
- Scandiravian 4y ago
  Saw this quote on their front-page > Merino wool is renewable. It’s made up of proteins and amino acids. It naturally breaks down in water and soil. So what happens when I was the cloth or sweat? How long is the expected lifetime of the product if water speeds up degradation?
  - jolmg 4y ago
    I mean, it's not going to dissolve like cotton-candy under water either. It's essentially like hair. I imagine you'd need to keep it in a place with ample microbial activity like in soil or swampish water for a few weeks to see the degradation. I do think it needs more care than fabrics like cotton or polyester. I wash wool separately on delicate and air dry. The centrifugal drying by the washing machine gets rid of nearly all the water, leaving them moist rather than damp.
  - Thlom 4y ago
    I have decades old wool sweaters. And my oldest wool base layers must be 10 years old. It's not a problem. If you dig it down in the ground or dump it in a lake it will break down with time.
    - johnnny 4y ago
      Are they 100% wool? Wooly jumpers, especially when made of fragile merino wool, remain usable for much longer when they are made of a mix that includes plastic fibers (maybe 75% merino, 25% polyester).
      - Thlom 4y ago
        The sweaters are 100% wool, but are the thick knitted type. Think a classic fisherman sweater or the Icelandic lopapeysa. These are not merino. Base layer is merino, might be a polyester/wool mix.
dogma1138 4y ago
Any wool?
- mdp2021 4y ago
  It is a bit more complicated than that; we had to check during a discussion: you may check e.g. the tree at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31119019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31119019
xupybd 4y ago
https://norsewear.co.nz/ https://norsewear.co.nz/
adrianN 4y ago
What's your definition of "sustainable"? Is wool okay? There are a couple of companies selling "sustainable" wool products. For example https://nordwolle.com/gb/ https://nordwolle.com/gb/
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

prmoustache 4y ago

I am using merino wool. That is the closest thing to sustainable I could think of as the same sheeps will produce it every year.

jgraham 4y ago
Unfortunately that's probably not true (and I say that as someone who has some much-loved merino clothes). The problem with animals like sheep is that they take up a huge amount of land, both directly grazing and for any additional feed that they require. The more intensively you farm them, the more ecosystem damage they do, but of course less intensive grazing either requires more land or reduces production and increases prices. I couldn't quickly find any numbers to compare to other materials like cotton, but at least for food production, grazing animals are an order of magnitude worse on this metric than any plant-based crops (e.g. [1]). The reason that land usage is bad is because it's zero sum: land that's being used for farming is likely to be less good at trapping carbon than other possible uses of the same land (e.g. reforestation), and is typically not very good habitat for wildlife (sheep in particular selectively graze on the tastiest plants and so tend to leave behind a monoculture of rough grasses which are their least favourite food). If you have to buy new clothes today, I don't really know what the best option is. Plastic-based fibres obviously require oil (although many are based on recycled plastics) and end up creating microplastic pollution and waste products that won't biodegrade. Cotton is very land intensive to produce, but I suspect wool is even worse. Maybe destroying land in the tropics is worse for biodiversity than grazing sheep in temperate regions (similar to palm oil being land efficient, but damaging to rainforests in particular)? In any case I don't know of a simple way to weigh these tradeoffs. The only thing that seems unambiguously like a win is buying fewer clothes and making them last longer. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-per-kg-poore https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-per-kg-poore
- _visgean 4y ago
  Here in UK most sheeps are in places where they have been for hundred if not thousand years. I agree its bad to deforest new areas for sheep grazing but that is not happening here.
- prmoustache 4y ago
  Sustainability is a subjective thing. If we consider the actual direction we are going: i.e. ever increasing world population, nothing is really sustainable in the long term anyway. But yes I agree that our worst enemy is fashion and the trend towards replacing perfectly working things with newer ones just for the sake of it.
- is_true 4y ago
  Sheep can live in places were most crops/animals can't

jolmg 4y ago

Smartwool? https://www.smartwool.com/what-matters.html#/smartwool/zqrx-regenerative-merino-wool https://www.smartwool.com/what-matters.html#/smartwool/zqrx-... I just noticed them today. Don't really know much about them.

Scandiravian 4y ago
Saw this quote on their front-page > Merino wool is renewable. It’s made up of proteins and amino acids. It naturally breaks down in water and soil. So what happens when I was the cloth or sweat? How long is the expected lifetime of the product if water speeds up degradation?
- jolmg 4y ago
  I mean, it's not going to dissolve like cotton-candy under water either. It's essentially like hair. I imagine you'd need to keep it in a place with ample microbial activity like in soil or swampish water for a few weeks to see the degradation. I do think it needs more care than fabrics like cotton or polyester. I wash wool separately on delicate and air dry. The centrifugal drying by the washing machine gets rid of nearly all the water, leaving them moist rather than damp.
- Thlom 4y ago
  I have decades old wool sweaters. And my oldest wool base layers must be 10 years old. It's not a problem. If you dig it down in the ground or dump it in a lake it will break down with time.
  - johnnny 4y ago
    Are they 100% wool? Wooly jumpers, especially when made of fragile merino wool, remain usable for much longer when they are made of a mix that includes plastic fibers (maybe 75% merino, 25% polyester).
    - Thlom 4y ago
      The sweaters are 100% wool, but are the thick knitted type. Think a classic fisherman sweater or the Icelandic lopapeysa. These are not merino. Base layer is merino, might be a polyester/wool mix.

dogma1138 4y ago

Any wool?

mdp2021 4y ago
It is a bit more complicated than that; we had to check during a discussion: you may check e.g. the tree at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31119019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31119019

xupybd 4y ago

https://norsewear.co.nz/ https://norsewear.co.nz/

adrianN 4y ago

What's your definition of "sustainable"? Is wool okay? There are a couple of companies selling "sustainable" wool products. For example https://nordwolle.com/gb/ https://nordwolle.com/gb/

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]