Although most of the current focus on lightening our carbon footprint revolves around transportation and heating issues, the modest little fabric all around you turns out to be from an industry with a gigantic carbon footprint. The textile industry, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, is the 5th largest contributor to CO2 emissions …
The mass of debris in the photo is, apparently, a tiny part of what the Wall Street Journal reports is afloat in the Pacific. Nobody really knows how big it is: “Some say it is about the size of Quebec, or 600,000 square miles — also described as twice the size of Texas. Others …
Discussion of the energy used to produce cloth.
I’m so glad you asked! From the previous post I hope I made it clear that natural fibers (whether organic or conventionally produced) have a lighter footprint than do synthetics – both in terms of emissions of greenhouse gasses and in terms of energy needed to manufacture the fibers. And natural fibers have the added …
Please be aware that our suggestions are just starting points for you to consider when looking at a fabric, because actually calculating a carbon footprint is very complex and time consuming. Peter Tydemers, who is an ecological economist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, has warned that many of the energy calculators we see should …
Lots of people are concerned about the transportation costs of shipping fabric from China to the US, because they think the shipping contributes to an enormous carbon footprint of, say, cotton fabric. The thinking goes that the homegrown variety (which doesn’t have the transportation burden) is far preferable because you save so much by not …
OEcotextiles 