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posted by
Fnord666
on Saturday September 14 2019, @10:36AM
from the at-least-it's-not-a-meat-dress dept.
from the at-least-it's-not-a-meat-dress dept.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49550263
It's a short article describing the strange materials people are experimenting with to make clothing. There is mushrooms, pineapple, PVC, and others. It's light on details (maybe there are other better articles with more technical information), but I thought it was interesting and worth sharing and discussing.
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The Bizarre Fabrics That Fashion is Betting On
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"History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions."
-- Ted Koppel
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday September 14 2019, @04:10PM (2 children)
How the alternative fibers are processed into cloth makes a huge difference. If you spend more energy processing mycelium into artificial fabrics, then you aren't really saving the Earth, are you? People use cotton because it's easy. They use wool because it's easy. It's easy to spin those materials into yarn and process them into cloth.
Look, you can already see the difference illustrated in the relative abundance of cotton and wool garments versus those made of linen. Flax grows everywhere but you have to process it quite a bit to get those pesky fibers out of the stalks. They're long fibers, too, which makes them ideal for spinning (compare that to winning enough fibers out of pineapple leaves, for Pete's sake). But the half dozen extra steps of retting and such make it a pain to work with and prevents it from being more than a niche material. (Yes, it wrinkles easier than cotton but it's also much cooler on the skin than cotton and by all rights ought to displace cotton for activewear).
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday September 14 2019, @04:16PM (1 child)
The mushroom clothing I've seen (pictures of) so far is mainly hats, and they were definitely minimally processed. Basically just hewn into shape. But you need a really big mushroom to start with.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday September 14 2019, @05:03PM
OK, but it still takes days to grow into that shape. Meanwhile, elsewhere thousands of units get produced every day. It's not economical. And what happens when the mycelium doesn't grow properly and you get half a hat? You're not gonna sell that one even at half price.
If we're every going to make progress as a global society with doing things more efficiently to actually live lightly on the land, then we must consider the cradle-to-grave of current processes versus proposed alternatives.
Washington DC delenda est.