Comments on: What Not To Wear

By: Plasticless

Plasticless — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 22:36:53 +0000

Johnny, the folks who make polar fleece can recycle ‘fleece to fleece’, but there is a limit to how many times that can be done. It seems there is an inevitable ‘end cycle’ with all plastic recycling.

Jane, good point about the pesticides in conventional cotton. I think a growing demand for organic cotton would have a very positive impact on the environment. It would also be great to have the material grown and processed on the continent that is demanding the end products in order to reduce transport. Cotton production and processing has followed cheap labor. It could be grown in many different parts of the world.

By: Jane

Jane — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 16:58:09 +0000

Almost every piece of clothing I own comes from a thrift shop. This week I got a beautiful blue hooded sweatshirt for under $2; seems brand new. I also knit so all my socks are hand-knit and a couple of sweaters. One point: non-organic cotton uses an enormous percentage of the world’s pesticides. Organic bamboo, cotton and hemp are now fairly widely available.

By: Johnny A.

Johnny A. — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:49:26 +0000

You make some great points about the choices we make for our clothing. Last factor on the list in my opinion should be price. Unfortunately, the Walmarts etc. make that the #1 priority for many consumers. When will they learn that by the time they go through their third POS shirt from the big box they could still be wearing a good quality garment and have actually saved money?

A question: are the fibers from the polar fleece garments truly recyclable? A few months ago, I blogged on how great I thought it was that Trex recycles plastic bags into deck lumber. I found out later that their process was actually “de-cycling” because once the boards were past their useful lives as decking material there is now way to reprocess them into anything else.