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Green grass of steppes falls victim to West’s stampede for cashmere
Jane Macartney, the Times
Fly over Mongolia in summer and the steppes look as green as they must have done when Genghis Khan and his armies galloped across the land — but the switch is startling as the flight crosses the border into China’s Inner Mongolian region. The ground suddenly turns brown.
The danger facing Mongolia is that its steppes may be transformed into a desert similar to the one eating away at neighbouring China. The culprit is the humble goat — and the fascination of fashionistas for cashmere.
…The money to be earned from “diamond fibre” cashmere, so prized among wealthy shoppers in Europe and the US, has resulted in Mongolia’s population of cashmere goats soaring to 40 million in 2007 from 25 million in 1993.
The World Bank warned of grave consequences for the environment and for farmers. “Mongolian herds will be at greater risk of severe weather conditions if growing livestock populations and deteriorating pastureland is not reversed,” it said in a report. A combination of the sharp hooves of the goats and their voracious consumption of all greenery — including roots — is harming the steppes. Sheep graze more lightly, skimming the leaves and grasses…
(8 August 2009)
Second skin: why wearing nettles is the next big thing
John-Paul Flintoff, The Ecologist
A few months back I was unpacking a delivery of seasonal veg with my five-year-old daughter when I noticed that she’d stopped helping. I looked round and saw that she’d peeled a couple of leaves off a cabbage and was fashioning them into a pair of shoes.
She may possibly have got the idea from me – because for the last couple of years I’ve become almost obsessed with taking control of my life by, among other things, making my own clothes. Having rescued an old, treadle-powered sewing machine from landfill, I’ve used it to make a fitted shirt and several pairs of jeans, while I’ve used an assortment of other tools to mend or modify sweaters, hats and underwear.
…The work of developing an alternative was overseen by a man legendary in the admittedly small nettle-fibre industry: Professor G. Bredeman of Hamburg University spent decades trying to grow the finest varieties of nettle, and continued doing so into the Second World War and beyond.
…Bredeman’s research was not altogether in vain, however, because in 1990 it was rediscovered by members of the University of Hamburg Institute of Applied Botany. They found live nettles, and photographs, and samples of nettle fabric. Nine years later, with EU backing, companies in Germany, Austria and Italy started to look into developing nettles commercially, using clones of high-fibre nettles cultivated over many years by Bredeman.
Unlike hemp, the nettle is a perennial, which means that it can be propagated vegetatively, rather than just sown from seed. After six weeks in the greenhouse, cuttings are transplanted to the field. There is no crop in the first year as the plants need to establish themselves but afterwards the plants can be havested year after year. The yield in the second year is between 1.5 and 2.5 metric tonnes per hectare. By the third and fourth year the harvest could amount to 4 tonnes, or 4,000 kilos. It takes about 40 kilos to provide enough material for one shirt, so a hectare of nettles could in its third year of production provide fibre for 100 shirts – as well as a great quantity of byproducts, including sugar, starch, protein and ethyl alcohol, not forgetting leaves to eat as a vegetable in fancy restaurants – and at home – or for use as a tea…
(20 August 2009)
related: http://timesonline.typepad.com/environment/2009/08/10-reasons-not-to-buy…. The book in question, Through the Eye of the Needles, is described here, and more interesting links follow on from it here. It is hard to think about actually planting nettles on purpose, as we are always trying to pull them up here. On the other hand, it is good to know they are good for something besides tea… -KS
Green Fashion Isn’t Skin Deep: Eco-Friendly Fashion Can Reduce Your Carbon Emissions
Jessica Root, Planet Green
Some of us could care less about fashion. For others of us, what we wear is all-important—an integral part of our being. An external expression of everything we love, appreciate and wish to emanate.
Funny then how green fashion so often gets thrown to the dogs when it comes to the sustainability discussion. This could be part in parcel to the fact that it doesn’t contribute a large piece to the carbon emissions pie (transportation, commercial/residential buildings and diet do)—but the fact of the matter is that it still contributes.
According to the Organic Clothing blog, the textile and garment industries overlap with global warming in many ways—from growing the fibers, to manufacturing, distributing and transporting the clothes, to the ways we wash, clean and unabashedly discard them.
1. Clean Clothes Greener…
2. Seek Out Sustainable Fabrics…
3. Like Local Eats, Wear Local Labels…
4. Find Pieces that Pull Double Duty and Ditch the Dump…
5. Vote with Your
