From: klier@iscsvax.uni.edu
Newsgroups: alt.sewing,rec.crafts.textiles
Subject: Re: environmentally conscious sewing
Date: 29 Sep 92 18:47:51 -0500
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Northern Iowa

In article <1992Sep29.171018.15665@u.washington.edu>, tabbott@milton.u.washington.edu (Tina Abbott) writes:
> 
> I also got lost in Kay's article!  How does wearing, purchasing, using,
> encouraging the continued production of 50-50 blends help the environment?

Sorry!  Student came in while I was writing and I sent it off sort of
half-baked (or half-edited)... ;-)

Synthetic & cotton blends are much more durable than all-cotton fabrics.  If
the synthetic happens to be a recycled (remade) fiber, that's also a plus
in my opinion.  If we buy/make more durable clothes _and use the garments
until they are worn out_, we make a net decrease in the amount of resources
used-- to grow the cotton, prepare it for fabric, weave the fabric and 
produce the garment.  When you start throwing in all the "costs" we've
written off as "externalities"* (to use the economists' terms), the cost
of producing a garment is fairly high.  

 *External costs are those that are not reflected in the purchase price of
 the garment (or whatever)...  They include water pollution, soil erosion,
 global climate change brought on by CO2 emissions, smog from diesel fuel
 for the tractors, deaths from respiratory disease associated with high-
 speed ginning and spinning operations....

I'll use my everyday clothes for an example.  I wear oxford cloth shirts and
jeans in the field almost every day.  And I'm fairly rough on my clothes:
under/over barbed wire, through marshes, sliding down hills on my rear
when a rock gives way beneath me...

A standard pair of 100% cotton denim jeans will generally last me about
one field season before the cloth is too thin in the knees and butt to
hold more patches.  A similar weight of 50-50 polyester/cotton denim,
same manufacturer lasts me about 4 years.  By choosing poly/cotton,
I've saved myself the cost of 3 pairs of jeans in that 4 yr period, and 
I've saved the earth the strain on its resources for producing those jeans.

A cotton oxford cloth shirt lasts me about 2.5 field years.  I'm still wearing
some 10 yr old 50-50 oxfords.  Again, that's a minimum 75% savings to me
and to the earth if I wear 50-50.  I also save the time to iron those
cotton oxfords, and the energy costs of heating the iron, and ironing.
Since I live in an area where most electricity is supplied by coal-fired
power plants, I'm also saving some costs of scrubbing sulfur, mining
coal, global climate change, etc., etc....

Well, what if I wore plain cotton but didn't iron?  My shirts (line
dried) look pretty awful, and I find my personal appearance a little
less like a parrot dragged through a hedge backwards if I've got on
an ironed shirt or one that didn't have wrinkles to begin with...

Pilling?  Well, I've noticed some minor pills on the shirt collars,
and got rid of them with a block of pumice.  

There are some disadvantages.  The blends are a little hotter in the
summer.  So I do keep some all-cotton shirts and jeans for *really
hot* days.  I *do* get a bit tired of my selection of shirts sometimes
(blue, white, blue and white striped, green and white striped, red and
white striped)-- but I *could* fix that by swapping shirts with someone
else, I suppose.

Most American garments are going to wind up in a dump no matter what they
are made of.  Some may be reprocessed into rags before they make it
to their final resting place, but very few will be reprocessed into 
fibers.  It's extremely difficult and uneconomic presently to reprocess
fibers.  The fibers break, and the shorter fibers are more difficult 
to spin and are weaker.  (On the other hand, a 100% synthetic garment
could presumably be reprocessed by dissolving the fibers in solvent, 
then respinning new, long-staple fibers.)

No easy answers, IMHO.  Just choices.

Kay Klier  Biology Dept  UNI 
Newsgroups: alt.sewing