Your periodical reminder that all clothing is hand made by humans, usually underpaid!
Polyester doesn't breathe and sheds microplastics when manufactured, worn and washed!
Cotton farming takes immense amounts of water and pesticides!
Viscose can be made from recycled fibres & waste cellulose, but it's a fairly toxic process!
Linen is more ecological to grow but expensive!
"But what do I wear then, Sini?"
The garments you already own, until they fall apart or someone else needs them!
#Sustainability #FastFashion #WorkersRights
More granular data:
There are some garment making processes that can be automated most or all the way through, like knitwear and socks, but most will still be finished, assembled and/or packed by hand. Crochet is always human work.
Wool is pretty good to wear and when certified and from a good source, can be pretty sustainable if you wear it until it stops existing. This can take decades. Yarn can be recycled, mending is great!
There are fabric recycling initiatives, but the best option is to not buy it if you don't need it. Secondhand is more expensive than it used to be, but you can find older, better quality garments than the crap of today!
@sinituulia@eldritch.cafe wool is heavily greenwashed and far less ethical than it’s made out to be. https://www.collectivefashionjustice.org/wool
@sinituulia@eldritch.cafe
Probably a lot more garment making processes could be automated, but underpaid labour is cheaper
I do also have a bunch of laundry tips and opinions in me, but unsure if there's an audience for that. 😂
@sabik@rants.au It's definitely cheaper, but also making fitted clothing out of floppy and not-uniform materials, joined with other floppy and not uniform material, is pretty hard to automate unless you come up with a series of robots with very dextrous digits with sensory apparatus for texture, shrink, elasticity and weight. Honestly the optical sensors to track where each piece and edge is would be the easiest part.
Funnily enough you can 3D-print weird garments (I doubt they're comfy), and programmable knitting machines have been a thing for centuries! But sewing is VERY complicated to do well.
@sinituulia@eldritch.cafe
Much like knitting machines keep hold of each stitch separately, a sewing robot would probably keep hold of each piece of the fabric throughout, I suspect
Laundry tips and opinions which were requested:
Using fabric softener will make cotton feel clammy and greasy, and give it a mildewy smell. Fabric conditioning helps with staticky plastic fibres but isn't necessary for natural fibres! Just wash without. Never put it on towels, it stops their absorption powers. You can use a little bit of vinegar instead of fabric softener, it will have a mild smell when wet, dries odourless.
Line drying is less wear on clothes than dryer but live your life if you have no place to dry them!
Bedding needs to be washed super hot occasionally! Towels, too!
If your shirts smell terrible because you've been sweating into them, soak them in the sink with a cup of vinegar in room temperature water, rinse, wash normally. This kills a lot of mildew and helps break apart organic residue.
Liquid laundry detergent is silly! Just get detergent in powder form, you're spared the plastic bottles and no heavy liquids are ferried around.
Soap nuts are great if you're allergic to everything but soap nuts. They're not even nuts and are compostable!
A lot of the washing instructions are LIES. You can literally boil 100% cotton and it's fine! You'd be amazed how much dry clean only is not! Polyester and cotton will be just dandy in 60 Celsius - the manufacturers play it safe because some dyes fade in hotter temps. Cheaply made clothes may shrink, but if it's stinky, take the risk!
@sinituulia@eldritch.cafe how do I get sweat stains out of pillow cases and shirt underarms?
@sinituulia@eldritch.cafe we wash everything at 40°C, everything hygiene-related (bedsheets, underwear, towels, etc.) at 60°C. I was despairing over "30°C gentle machine wash, no tumble dry, careful dry cleaning only" clothes just earlier today, too: 97% cotton, 3% elasthane chinos that were labelled as 30°C, no tumble drying, and loads of them in all sorts of colours, even "basically the natural colour of cotton" off-white.
I had half a mind to buy them, throw them in at 40°C and tumble dry, and see what comes out, but I couldn't afford sinking that money down the drain if it does damage them.
@sinituulia@eldritch.cafe any tips on what to do when you leave it a bit too long in the machine and it starts to smell?
@sinituulia@eldritch.cafe Any tips for getting fabric softener out of hand-me-down synthetics?
@sinituulia@eldritch.cafe thank you for these! Been preaching most of these myself. Question though, if you don't mind—I recently switched from powder detergent to liquid because I read powder is harder on the fabrics. Is this bullshit? I do refill a glass bottle with bulk detergent, so reduced waste, but of course that bulk box is still plenty of plastic :(
@sinituulia@eldritch.cafe what is your take on 100% hand-knitted wool garments and socks? Socks is difficult because most sock wool comes with polyester because otherwise they aren't durable. Still looking for better options. Tencel for example...
@sinituulia@eldritch.cafe Re: stink, it's also worth periodically cleaning your washing machine - you can get cleaners that run through most of the mechanism, though discouraging mould and mildew on seals is a constant battle and why I hate front loaders. (Most mould killers - including stuff like white vinegar - will ruin the rubber of the seals, so it's hard to completely kill. You can use cloths or paper towel to soak up any excess water after you've used the machine so it dries faster, but then you have to remember to remove them...)
I used to clean mine every 6 months, or after washing anything particularly badly soiled or stinky.
@sinituulia@eldritch.cafe Another one is do not put printed tshirts (especially ones from custom print places like RedBubble) in a clothes dryer even if the label says you can. The actual shirt will be fine, the printing may not be after a few rounds.
@sinituulia@eldritch.cafe I heard powder detergent is not compatible with softshell jackets. Whats about that?
@sinituulia@eldritch.cafe Vodka is a disinfectant. One cap of vodka to 8 kg of any kind of cloth will make odorless. #Costumer #ActorsAreSmelly
@amberage@eldritch.cafe Yeaaaaah, my bullshit senses are tingling with the "30C only" label on plant fibres at the best of times. At the very least it should take 40C without issue! There's no good reason why cotton (+elasthane) shouldn't withstand 60C! If they cut corners and didn't prewash and thus pre-shrink the fabric, it can shrink, but this really shouldn't be an issue.
I read somewhere that some percentage of human yeasts survive the 40C wash and may give you foot problems, so you should probably chuck socks into the hotter wash sometimes, too. 🤔
@Willow@chaosfem.tw Oh yes, it's basically my nemesis. It depends on how much is on there, and what it smells like, sometimes the only thing that works is washing it 5-12 times and suffering.
But! I've found that Marseille soap works pretty well. (It's a type of traditional olive oil based block soap. As soap as you can get, really. I assume Castile soap works similarly.)
First I'll reaaaaaaally lather the garments in the sink with the soap and some comfortably warm water, mostly rinse that off, lather again, rinse it again... You can sort of tell when gunk stops coming off, when it feels less slippery, or the smell changes?
Then you just need to rinse it really really well, because bar soap isn't super good inside a washing machine in large quantities, though a little doesn't hurt. Put in like double the detergent you'd usually use, wash normally.
If that didn't do it, or it feels fine but smells bad, wash it with a cup of table vinegar, or 3 tablespoons of white vinegar.
@marion_grau@climatejustice.social @sinituulia@eldritch.cafe
occasionally i have found 100% wool socks which were commercially made - in australia the ones from aldi are awesome. i have darned the heel before wearing them so they will last.
wool is great insulation for sheep because it contracts when wet - i chuck socks in the washing machine (they are half dry after spin cycle) then i stretch them before allowing them to dry on a line or clothes horse.
woollen jumpers/cardigans i rinse quickly in luke warm water with “wool mix” - i don’t know if this is a universal product - wool won’t shrink unless it is left wet or in water, or in water that is too hot. spin dry in washing machine, or wring gently in a towel if you live somewhere wet/cold
To make wool mix:
1/2 glass soap flakes or grated soap
1 glass hot water
1/2 glass methylated spirits (aka denatured alcohol)
1 tablespoon eucalyptus oil
Place all the ingredients in a large jar and shake well.
(Warning: keep wool mix out of reach of children as metho and eucalyptus oil are toxic.)
if i have any kind of stain i dab some wool mix on the spot and leave garment til wash day. over the years i’ve discovered this is great stuff for grease spots - (a friend once spilled olive oil in a silk blouse and we saved the garment with eucalyptus oil before the olive oil dried)
@marion_grau@climatejustice.social It's been a while since I knit or did crochet, but there's at least a couple of kinds of 100% wool that has been felted and treated in such a way that the fibres become harder, denser and more durable. "Superwash" or something, because they can also be machine washed after without shrinking. Will wear down eventually, of course, but. 🤔
I've handled some sheep wool yarn with linen, hemp, ramie, alpaca, nettle and/or silk mixed in, which apparently makes the yarn more abrasion resistant, but never worked with them! I know my mother has a wool & nettle jumper that is close to 20 years old and is in perfect condition and feels only slightly rougher and squished together than "normal" wool.
Worth mentioning is that you rarely wash woollen things, so they shed a lot less microplastics into the ecosystem even if there is polyester or acrylic in them!
@joannaholman@aus.social Absolutely so, yes! The printing medium is a sort of melted on film which softens in high temperatures and sort of goops off the fibres it is attached to. If the film is very thick it will just crack and wear down in a fairly interesting way, but the thinner films (like on Redbubble) will just flake off.
If you want them to last, wash mild to moderate heat with a delicate spin cycle.
@Linza@kamu.social I've heard of spraying a mix of vodka and water on clothes, but didn't know you could also put it in the laundry machine! I mean, obviously there's no reason why not, I just didn't know it would work. 😄
@ttk@ruhr.social I haven't heard that since I don't use softshell jackets, but I would assume it's because the granules of detergent need a bunch of agitation to fully dissolve into the water. This isn't an issue with permeable fabrics, because the water washes right on through them. Softshell is fairly not-permeable so I assume the granules would just get trapped between the different layers and exist there in different concentrations and have trouble fully rinsing out.
@sinituulia@eldritch.cafe socks count towards underwear for me tbh, I totally forgot to mention them separately 🙈
@maudenificent@aus.social @marion_grau@climatejustice.social
Marseille soap rubbed directly on just the spot, gently wetted, and then rinsed out with cold water and pressed dry with a towel is what I've been taught to do even the most delicate materials, if you don't have to or want to wash the entire thing!
(Savon de Marseille is like Castile soap, not a brand but rather a type: the traditional ones are made from 100% olive oil. A block of any old bar soap will be effective but perhaps not as gentle.)
@sinituulia@eldritch.cafe @ttk@ruhr.social Yeah, it tends to leave powdery marks on the outer shell, and leaves the garment feeling kind of weird and slightly greasy. You could probably get around it by pre-dissolving your soap powder in some warm water (I've had to do this before when I needed to hand-wash a large piece of hand-dyed fabric). Possibly also doing a second rinse cycle.
@sinituulia@eldritch.cafe @marion_grau@climatejustice.social
interesting - i have never heard of this - had a quick search online and there’s nothing local, pure, cheap, easy to buy etc otherwise i would try it.
but i’ll be looking for it 💐
@sinituulia@eldritch.cafe @marion_grau@climatejustice.social
interesting - i have never heard of this - had a quick search online and there’s nothing local, pure, cheap, easy to buy etc otherwise i would try it.
but i’ll be looking for it 💐
Sini Tuulia
