Vegan materials

[juliet]

One of the things that made the lovely tipi at Waveform lovely was that it came with a bunch of sheepskin rugs. Which are totally the business when it comes to keeping you warm when sitting on the ground: they're thick, insulating, and unlike e.g. cotton don't feel damp when it's cold. However: not very vegan (not even vegetarian, really).

Which gave rise to another bout of my ongoing internal debate about the use of materials like leather and wool, and their alternatives.

The argument against wool is animal cruelty - although sheep aren't killed for their wool (obviously), there are issues of mistreatment with large-scale production. (Bottom line is: large-scale commercial production of anything is more or less guaranteed to be bad for most people, animals, and land involved.) However: there are increasingly large numbers of people producing organic wool from well-kept, well-cared-for animals. Ecologically speaking, if you are keeping sheep in, say, Wales, then there's really not a lot else that's useful that you could be doing with that land. Growing wool on it is, if done right, environmentally fine, and efficient.

The alternative non-animal based substances are cotton, and various artificial fibres that are all petrochemical based. Petrochemicals are, I'm pretty sure, environmentally worse than wool (& wool will probably last longer). Cotton is difficult to buy organic, and even if you do buy organic there are still monoculture issues. And textile-miles issues.

With leather: obviously, involves dead animals. But lasts better than non-animal alternatives (even if fake leather is a lot better than it used to be), and again has, or can have, less environmental impact. Although I haven't really seen leather around that has organic or good-husbandry labels on. I don't need new shoes in the foreseeable, but when I do, should I be thinking about going back to leather?

It comes down, of course, to the fact that moral decisions are complicated, and different moral issues don't necessarily run side by side. You have to decide what weighting you give to them and act accordingly. At the moment the thing I want to prioritise is "consume less", so the immediate solution to these issues is not to buy any of the options (I want to do some more sewing soon, but I'm going to see what I can use from my fabric stash, or go charity-shop hunting for things to repurpose, rather than buy more fabric of whatever sort. Similarly I'm still up to my eyebrows in yarn stash.). It's an ongoing consideration for the future, though.

Comments

Ibndiymz

[(Anonymous)]

CJqTVL

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

http://www.greenshoes.co.uk might be worth looking at for fairly ethically produced leather. They're not hugely cheap, but the shoes are resoleable. Also - shoes made to fit! When my shoes die, I might get shoes from there if I think I need shoes.

[half-of-monty.livejournal.com]

*is overcome with shoe lust*

[mrs-leroy-brown.livejournal.com]

hee, i just linked to that site on a friend's LJ. i love that place but am too skintified to buy anything!

after trying for ages to find second hand combats, i ended up buying leather boots as i will wear the hell out of them and i know that the combats which lasted me nearly 10 years (bought before going veggie) just could not be replicated in fake-leather, so went with a pair of real-leather, as to me that's far better. but as you say, everyone has their own ideas of what is best for them & what is do-able for them.

[juliet]

Resoleable = good. Ooh, their vegan ones are resoleable as well! Also they do ecotan leather...

They have some v nice stuff there. Am eyeing up their sandals now for next summer...

[half-of-monty.livejournal.com]

If it's sandals you're after, chacos are entirely non-leather (made of v. strong last-for-ever webbing strap stuff), implasibly adjustable and comfortable, and they resole them for you for free. However you might still need to post them back to the states to get them to do that. But I think they're at least stocking them some places in Britain now.

Hmm, lots of plastic going into making them, so petrochemicals all round, but like you say you can't have everything.

[juliet]

Thanks for this! I have saved the link.

[kake]

Oooh. I am starting to save for a pair RIGHT NOW.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Wool in Europe is now only a by-product of the lamb meat industry - while there used to be a market for wool (up to £10/sheep) there isn't any more thanks to inventions like Goretex and nylon fleece, so wool is removed solely on welfare grounds and the sale of it often raises less than it costs to remove - lots of it goes to loft insulation nowadays.

Most lamb is grown for at least part of its life on uplands where you really can't do anything else (Disadvantaged Areas and Severely DAs) farming-wise, and then when the grass runs out, moved south for a bit. Sheep are seasonal breeders, so September is the time for most lambs to be moved or exported. Except they can't move at the moment.

The difference between normal UK lamb and organic lamb is precious little.
My personal moral take atm is to eat lamb in preference to most other meats, and I plan to buy lots of cheap lamb over the next few weeks - there's 1.1 million lambs that can't go for export atm.

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Thanks for the hot tip!

[juliet]

Not sure if wool being a byproduct of the meat industry makes it better or worse, morally... (I'm definitely not going to go back to eating dead things, whatever else I may reconsider). But that's interesting, thank you!

[ludy]

have you seen No Sheeep For You? it's about wool free kntiting and has lots of infomatoio about other plant fibres. Apperetly soy fibre is made form a bi-product of tofu maiking which is pretty cool

[juliet]

Thanks! I have experience with a fair few plant fibres - bamboo is a nice one (& ecologically pretty sound!) as well. I need to look more into the soy/tofu thing as some sorts of soy production are dodgy as hell. (It looks like that's more the soy-as-filler rather than the soy-as-tofu stuff, though.)

Interesting that it's a tofu by-product!

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

i've been in two minds about wool for some time. Many breeds of sheep have been bred over thousands of years to produce so much wool that they *need* to be sheared for their own comfort in hot weather. So as we've bred them to be this way, do we then have a duty of care to them?

As far as leather goes, i've been told that british leather can is a side product of the meat industry, where as other countries leather isn't necessarily.

I personally try to avoid leather and fur where i can, mainly because it makes me feel icky.

But it *is* a difficult issue, with lots of grey area, and not one where I've fully made up my mind. There's that balance between vegan and environmentally concious, and often the two are not compatible!

[juliet]

Leather for clothes would make me feel icky (& fur NO WAY); leather for shoes is a bit more difficult.

With the sheep: we may have a duty of care to shear any existing sheep of this sort, but do we necessarily have a duty to keep breeding them? If wool production *is* unethical, then the ethical thing to do might be to breed out the over-production of wool, or to just let those particular breeds die out.

It is, as you say, Complicated.

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

I'm always re-defining my issues of what i feel is 'right' and not, sometimes i feel like i shouldn't call myself 'vegan' as i seem to have suh different views to so many of them.

Overproduction is really my issue though, far more so than 'cruelty' - i don't think using food or products from animals is cruel per se - after all if you truly live with nature and not against it, then you *would* use what's there, you'd just only take what you needed, if you see what i mean?

We're such a mass consumerist culture - i wonder how we would cope if production shifted focus?

In South Africa, there's very little importing of things liek fruit and vegetables, apart from in the really big cities. So if something's out of season, it's out of season. End of. You can't have it. It was quite weird to think how dull our diet would get here, if we tried to do that. I'm not sure i could!

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

I think you are smart enough and ethical enough to realize when to follow which principle. You don't have to be encouraging factory farming when you consume animal products if you're careful, and you are.

And hurrah for being thoughtful about this stuff. You're pretty cool, you know that?

[juliet]

It's not just factory farming; it's a more general issue about animal welfare (non-factory-farm != well looked after).

I certainly would not go back to eating meat, because that is straightforwardly a) involving animal death & b) totally unnecessary. I'd be unlikely to go back to eating dairy, as well, for much the same reasons (a) needn't be true, but is commercially in practice). I think it's specifically wool that's probably the toughest one.

But thank you!

[booklectica]

A bit tangentially, saw this new snippet and thought of you: (from the Guardian)

Dance-powered lights

Are you sick of wasting the power you put into doing the "running man" on the dance floor? Well, fear no more. Assuming you're in Rotterdam, you can convert all that energy into lighting the very dance floor you grace. You just dance on a pressure pad while the floor underneath illuminates in varying colours - not just green - powered by your movements.

The Sustainable Dance Project was started last year, and the people behind it call for "no more counter-culturists and moralising attitudes". The organisers set up whole clubs inside existing ones for special events. Facilities include rainwater toilets, walls that change colour according to the heat in the room and "biological beer".

In fact, the project's leader, Michet Smit, wants to convert all clubs into sustainable ones. So look down next time you're shaking it like you mean it - you could be saving the planet at the same time.

[juliet]

Awesome! I like that :)

The Waveform Project had compost loos, which was good.