heymerle:

bookshelfdreams:

aprillikesthings:

somarysueme:

somarysueme:

aprillikesthings:

“Bamboo is antifungal”

Because it’s rayon

“Eucalyptus fabric is cooling!”

Yeah, because it’s rayon

“We make clothing called seacell out of seaweed!”

Yeah I looked on your website it’s made by the lyocell process, which means-

-wait for it-

It’s fucking rayon!!

Listen. There is a list of actual plant fibers that are directly made into fabric: cotton, linen, ramie, some hemp. I’m sure I’m missing a couple.

But if you’re wondering “huh how did they turn that plant material into fabric,” 99% of the time? It’s RAYON.

All rayon is made by putting plant material in chemical soup, dissolving out everything but the cellulose, and turning the cellulose into filaments/fibers.

The source of the cellulose has zero effect on the eventual fabric.

Rayon made from bamboo or eucalyptus or seaweed is not any better than rayon from any other sources.

Don’t let companies mislead you!

Hold on I need to DuckDuckGo something

Damn this was supposed to be a joke but turns out it’s hard to get scientifically rigorous comparisons of environmental impact across textile products from a casual search. “It’s all fucking rayon” appears mostly true but also I’m finding plenty of claims that it’s more sustainable than cotton anyway.

But that’s not what this post was actually about anyway so like

it’s all fucking rayon confirmed I guess 👍

So it’s worth separating out two things here:

1. the qualities of rayon as a fabric, outside of any other consideration
2. the environmental impacts

This post is mostly about the first thing. A lot of companies are giving rayon many many different names as a way of disguising that It’s Just Rayon, and claiming the fabric has special qualities.

But cellulose is cellulose. The process of extruding it into filaments and making those filaments into fibers/yarn/fabric is what gives it different qualities: some rayon is silky, some is fuzzy, etc.

It’s all great at absorbing sweat, and it all takes longer to dry, and it insulates okay until it gets damp at which point it’s worse than wearing nothing, which is why it’s often blended into other things. The really nice tops I have from Uniqlo’s Heattech line are a blend of a couple of synthetics and rayon. They’re warm for being so thin and stretchy, but don’t make me sweaty-feeling at all. (In a conversation among people with ADHD I found out I’m not the only one who wears them nearly daily for ¾ths of the year lol.)

The irony of how often it’s compared to polyester in the notes of this post is that polyester can also be made into a billion different textures. I have polyester that feels like wearing a plastic tarp, but I also own polyester that’s light and breezy and totally comfy in boiling heat. I also have some very soft polyester fleece, as many people do. It’s all a matter of how the filaments are extruded and how they’re made into fabric.

But to get into the environmental stuff:

People get really into which fabrics are more “sustainable.”

And rayon currently is made, 99% of the time, via one of two processes: viscose and lyocell (Tencel is a brand name for the lyocell process). Viscose is an older method and far more common, to the point that if a fabric doesn’t specify that it’s lyocell (or cuproammonium) you can probably assume it’s viscose. Viscose is, generally speaking, far more polluting and hazardous to the humans working in the factory as well. Lyocell uses what’s called a “closed-loop” method, so it puts out way fewer pollutants. It’s also more expensive, generally speaking. There is such a thing as “ecoviscose” but I haven’t looked into it.

(Modal just means rayon made from beech trees and afaict doesn’t differentiate which process. Cupro is made using a less-common process called “cuproammonium,” and I’m not sure how polluting it is, but apparently in China it’s sometimes called “ammonia silk” which is wild.)

Rayon does have two definite advantages, despite everything I said up there:

1. you can make it out of any cellulose source, and that includes things that would otherwise be considered garbage/waste
2. it biodegrades pretty fast. Like, faster than cotton.

BUT THAT ALL SAID: every fabric requires something shitty, quite frankly. Cotton takes a TON of water and usually pesticides. Silk requires a lot of farming of mulberry and then electricity to warm the places where the silkworms live and also you have to cook the silkworms alive so they don’t cut the fibers. Linen requires its own chemical soup to be turned into usable fibers unless you’re making it from flax the old fashioned way which requires a lot of time and a shit-ton of effort. (Like seriously there’s rippling, retting, breaking, scutching, and hackling. And THEN you can spin it into thread.) Wool requires a lot of land etc for sheep, but also any wool item you own that’s machine washable has had the barbs melted off the fibers with chemicals, and in many cases is also coated with a resin!

And that’s not getting into dying. But if you’ve ever dyed fabric at home you know that it usually requires careful handling and in many cases goggles. Those chemicals are often toxic as fuck.

If you’re trying to be sustainable in your clothing choices, the fact is that the absolute best thing you can do is:

1. BUY LESS CLOTHES. Period. End of story.
2. Buy secondhand when you can.
3. Make those clothes last: use cold water washes and don’t put them in the dryer and don’t use fabric softener. Repair them when you can, and use them for rags when they wear out.

“What fiber is it made of” just matters way fucking less than buying fewer items of clothing and using them until they wear out.

But most people don’t want to do those things. They want to know which brand of clothes is “sustainable.”

The sustainable thing is to buy and throw away less clothes. That’s it.

Also: Environmental impact concerns more than just the fibre material.

The supply chains in the fashion industry are so convoluted and intransparent that it is virtually impossible to trace a single item back to its place of origin. Even the seller themselves often has no way of knowing where exactly their items come from. This is on purpose, because a lot of clothing is made under appalling circumstances. Clothes are still mostly handsewn. You can do the maths yourself as to how much the seamstress who put together your 20€ dress was paid - and that’s not to mention the workers involved in fabric production, dyeing, finishing the garment, and so on.

Ethically produced clothing exists, but it is generally safe to assume that any clothing you buy is the result of exploitation.

From fibre to garment, anything you buy will have traveled the globe several times over to get to you, no matter how eco-friendly the material itself is.

The fashion industry is one of the most harmful in the world, for the climate, the environment, and for people.

This is why we all need to buy less clothing. Low-impact, ethical, fair, and affordable clothing simply does not exist right now.

‘any wool item you own that’s machine washable has had the barbs melted off the fibers with chemicals, and in many cases is also coated with a resin"

THAT IS A LIE. Wool doesn’t have barbs, and coating it with resin makes it useless.

So first of all, I…..don’t see anything on the link that disproves what I said? Is it in the videos? Did I miss something?

But yes, I suppose “scales” is more accurate than barbs:

But the reason most wool felts in a washing machine is that the strands swell up slightly when damp (especially in warmer water), making the scales lift slightly. The scales catch on each other when rubbed together/agitated, and voila, you’ve shrunk your sweater.

This website describes the superwash process, which was trademarked until 2006, and makes it so you can safely machine-wash wool (instead of soaking and washing by hand, without agitating it at all):

Superwash was originally a product certification trademark owned by the Wool Bureau, but that trademark expired in 2006. Superwash is now a generic term applied to shrink-proofed wool that has been treated with the “chlorine-Hercosett” process.
The superwash treatment is the final step before wool is shipped off to the spinning mill, after it has been scoured, dried, carded, and combed into top. The wool is passed through a chlorine solution (similar to what you’d find in a swimming pool). The chlorine erodes the overlapping scales on the surface of the fiber.

The wool then passes through a neutralizing solution to stop the action of the chlorine. Then the wool is coated with a layer of a polymer resin called Hercosett to smooth and seal the eroded surface. Finally, a softener is applied, the wool is dried, and it’s packed up and shipped to spinning mills.

More info here

Or here, from wikipedia:

Superwash wool (or washable wool) technology first appeared in the early 1970s, producing wool that has been specially treated so it is machine washable and may be tumble-dried. This wool is produced using an acid bath that removes the “scales” from the fiber, or by coating the fiber with a polymer that prevents the scales from attaching to each other and causing shrinkage. This process results in a fiber that holds longevity and durability better than synthetic materials, while retaining garment shape.

Like, I didn’t pull that out of my ass lol I’m a knitter and I’ve done a little hand-spinning