Animal Fibers

Plant Fibers

- Cotton
- Bast fibers: Hemp, Linen, Banana
- Rayons: Bamboo, Soy, Tencel

Sheep

But wool production doesn't have to be so chemical and resource intensive. After all, it was sustainably raised for thousands of years before all of these chemicals were developed. Certified organic, minimally-processed, and/or small farm wools are becoming more readily available in both natural and plant-dyed shades. Wool is often the easiest fiber to find locally. It takes dye well and is easy to spin, so it's great choice if you want to get involved with more stages of yarn production. And while wool processing will always consume a fair amount of water, its springiness, water-resistance, and durability can make for long-lasting garments that won't need to be washed and blocked often.

Greenest options: organic, minimally-processed, naturally colored yarns from sources like Full Belly Farm, Zen Sheep Farm, Green Mountain Spinnery, Thirteen Mile Lamb & Wool (also plant dyed available), and Marr Haven Farm (not certified organic, but very sustainably raised). Plant-dyed organic wool is available from Nature's Palette and Tierra Wools.

Overview:
Goat fibers include cashmere (short, downy undercoat that can come from many different goat types) and mohair (long, lustrous coat from Angora goats). These fibers can be very sustainably produced. They don't need as much scouring as wool, and they absorb natural and low-impact acid dyes extremely well. The main potential concern is that goats are voracious, sharp-hooved foragers. This isn't a problem when there's adequate grass and moisture. But when overgrazed on fragile, arid grasslands - which is what's happening with cashmere production in China - they can accelerate desertification, erosion, and dust pollution.

Cashmere
About 70% of our cashmere comes from China, where the explosion of cashmere production has resulted in some serious desertification and lots of miserable goats. Since each goat produces only 85-225 g of fiber each year, you need a lot of goats to satisfy skyrocketing global demand, and herds have been expanded far beyond the land's carrying capacity. The resulting desertification has impacts both near (lots of goats living in brutish, starving conditions) and far (dust pollution reaching as far as the US). Bottom line: Conventional cashmere production is unequivocally unsustainable. Even yarns that say 'made in Italy' can be made with Chinese cashmere.

That said, cashmere production doesn’t have to be environmentally destructive. The greenest choices are small, sustainable goat farms like Roka Farm, Dancing Goat, Western View Farm, and Springtide Farm. Check out the Eastern Cashmere Association for sources of spinning fiber.

Mohair
Mohair fiber seems to be pretty eco-friendly. Angora goats are efficient fiber producers, with a single goat producing 10 pounds of fiber or more each year. You can even find naturally colored mohair in reddish, brown, and black hues. And much of it is domestically produced (40% of world production is in Texas). Of course, this speaks more to the raw fiber than to the finished product. I haven't been able to find information on mohair processing in particular, but I would have reservations about the highly processed, bleached and dyed mohir yarns. I'm most excited about Buckwheat Bridge Angoras, which has undyed and plant-dyed mohair from their own goats that they process in a solar-powered mill. Also look for farm-source mohair on Local Harvest or the Colored Angora Goat Breeders Association.

Overview
The camelid family includes alpacas, camels, llamas, guanacos, and vicunas. Alpaca and camel are the fibers that I see most often for handknitters. I haven't found much that specifically addresses their eco-friendliness, and I haven't found any certified organic camelid fiber, but my own assessment is that they're very green fibers. Camelids are typically raised with no or few agro-chemicals. They don't graze low and have soft feet, so they aren't as hard on the land as goats can be. Since their fiber has no lanolin, it doesn't need the same harsh scouring as wool. And they come in beautiful natural colors.

Alpaca
One of the best things about alpaca is that it comes is a gorgeous range of natural creams, browns, grays, and blacks, so you can get great variety without needing to dye it. And because alpaca farming has become popular across the US, it's relatively easy to find local, farm-fresh alpaca farms through Local Harvest and Alpaca Nation. For more broadly available alpaca yarns, I'd recommend Misti Alpaca (family owned), Frog Tree (supports a non-profit Bolivian co-op), or Blue Sky Alpacas in their undyed colors; all of these companies have assured me that they use biodegradable soap for washing the raw fibers.

Camel
Camels are unique among camelids in that they molt their undercoat each spring, so they don't need to be sheared. This super soft undercoat can be found in some big name yarns, but I'd most recommend the handspun camel yarns sold by The Snow Leopard Trust, which supports habitat conservation and indigenous livelihoods in Mongolia.

Overview
Buffalo, Yak, and Musk Ox are all large, lumbering animals in the cattle family. In the winter they grow thick, gorgeously soft undercoats, which are shed in the spring. They are hardy animals, well-adapted to harsh conditions, and typically raised on grass and without chemicals. Their coats contain no lanolin and are often sold minimally processed and in natural colors. They are all around a very green choice. On the downside, they are often prohibitively expensive.

Qiviut/Musk Ox
Musk Ox are native to Arctic North America and Greenland. Most of us know the fiber by its Inuit name, Qiviut. It's a soft, gray fiber, usually sold undyed. Most qiviut is combed from live animals (you can hear more about this process in Episode 23 of Weavecast). Qiviut and qiviut-blend yarns are available from the Oomingmak Musk Ox Collective, which is owned by native Alaskans, the Windy Valley Musk Ox Farm, and the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, which runs a musk ox research and breeding program.

Buffalo
Buffalo, which are more properly known as American Bison, are native to the American plains. Their undercoat is a beautiful chocolate brown. Although bison molt their undercoats like musk ox and yak, most bison yarn is made from fiber that's sheared after the animals are slaughtered for their meat. This certainly gives buffalo less of the warm-fuzzy feeling than the hand-combed qiviut, but it's certainly a step up from throwing away their wonderful fiber (which is what used to happen). Buffalo yarn is most readily available from Buffalo Gold and American Buffalo Products. Wooly Warren sells small amounts of fiber that have been naturally molted.

Yak
Yaks are native to the Himalayas. I have a special fondness for them, since I have such memories of meeting them while trekking in Nepal (click the photo to the left to get the full effect!). Their soft down is combed off the animals and most commonly comes in a dusky brown-grey, though it can be found in a range from white to a dark brown-black. I would most recommend the minimally-processed yak fibers and yarn from small farms in the US, such as Bijou Basin Ranch (which uses small US mills and biodegradable soap). The only pure yak yarn that I can find that is sourced from the Himalayas is Shokay. The company works directly with Tibetan herders, but I have reservations about its 'greenness' because it seems so highly processed and dyed.

There are two ‘green’ reasons to be careful about the silk yarn you buy. First, and most importantly for me, there are some nasty solvents, bleaches, chemical treatments, and dyes that can get used in conventional silk processing. I haven't found anything that specifically talks about the chemicals that go into producing yarn for handknitting, but you can read all about silk fabric here.

Second, some people object to silk on cruelty grounds. Since silkworms stain and break the silk fiber as they emerge from the cocoon, most bombyx and even some tussah silks are made by boiling the cocoons while the worms are still in them and reeling a single, continuous filament off the cocoon. The numbers add up - it could take over 2000 cocoons for 1 lb of the finest silk. Curiously, I see a lot of concern for the worms and not a lot written up about the people who are involved in this incredibly labor-intensive industry in places like India, Cambodia, Thailand and China.

The good news is that there are lovely silk yarns that are both chemical and cruelty free. Look for unbleached, minimally processed silks, especially those with a 'peace silk' designation. 'Peace silk' means that the moths were allowed to emerge before the cocoons were collected for carding and spinning. The colors are lovely and subtle: Bombyx silk (raised on mulberry leaves) will be a creamy ivory color, and 'wild' varieties like tussah, muga, and eri (raised on more tannic leaves like oaks) will typically have richer golden colors. These also take natural dyes well.

The first place to look for green silk yarns is the wonderful Aurora Silk. She has both undyed and natural dyed peace silks, and some additionally have organic or fair trade certification. Unbleached, naturally colored tussah silk yarn can be found from Treenway Silks and Henry's Attic, though I don't think these are peace silk.

Another green approach is to use recyled silk yarn, most commonly made from the colorful scraps left over from sari production. Mango Moon and Wool Peddler both have sari yarn spun by womens' cooperatives in Nepal.

Cotton is the big, bad guy of the fiber world, consuming truly gargantuan amounts of water and agro-chemicals. It's the most pesticide-intensive crop in the world, and many of the chemicals used in growing cotton - including fertilizers, pesticides, and chemical defoliants - have incredibly toxic carcinogenic and neurological effects on the workers and surrounding ecosystem. Add to that all of the detergents, bleaches, dyes, and chemical treatments used in processing the cotton, and you have a very un-green fiber.

The greenest option is to choose organic and colorgrown cotton yarns. Colorgrown cottons naturally grow in a range of browns and greens, which deepen rather than fade with age. They come from ancient strains of colored cottons that were revived in the 1990s by Sally Fox. Her company, Fox Fibre, sells a variety of yarns. Pakucho, Blue Sky Alpacas, and Henry's Attic also offer organic, colorgrown cottons, and there are more coming on the market all the time.

Organically grown, plant-dyed cottons are also starting to come on the market from companies like Rowan. Plant fibers are much less receptive to natural dyes than are animal fibers, so these typically come in pale, washed-out colors.

Critics point out that all cotton - even organic cotton - takes a huge amount of water to grow, and it's often grown in arid places where water resources are in short supply. This is a valid concern. At the same time, I'm not satisfied with the alternatives. Hemp and linen are much more sustainable crops, but the truth is that I often want something softer. Bamboo is often sold as the green alternative to cotton, but as you'll see below, I don't think its processing is green enough. So I end up usually going to organic, colorgrown cotton when I want a plant fiber.

Overview
Bast fibers come from the inner bark of plant stems. They make super durable, crisp, and cool garments. On the whole, these tend to be green fibers. Hemp and flax require little to no agro-chemicals and much less water than cotton. The traditional method of separating the fiber from the plant stalks is very eco-friendly but labor intensive: 'retting' (decaying away the pectin that binds the fiber) by letting the cut stalks rot in the field, followed by pounding, crushing, and combing. On the other hand, there are a few 'green' concerns to be aware of. First, to make the process quicker, some industrial production involves chemical defoliants and retting agents. Second, the fiber is often bleached and dyed and may be softened with caustic soda and acid washes. So, you still need to look beyond the fiber label and investigate individual brands to see if a yarn is green.

Hemp
Hemp is the fiber darling of the eco-friendly set, and for good reason. It's an amazingly productive and sustainable crop that makes all kinds of useful products, from nutritious seeds to clothing and paper. The fiber is naturally a dull tan color. As a handknitting fiber, it's definitely on the stiff and coarse side. But the finished garments soften with washing, so much so that I've even made a tank top with it (although I often wear a camisole underneath). I used Hemp for Knitting, whose website indicates that their hemp is retted in water. Aurora Silk also offers plant-dyed and natural colored hemps. In the UK, look for House of Hemp.

Linen
Linen, which comes from the flax plant, may be the oldest fiber in the world. Fragments have been found dating back to 8000 BC. It doesn't grow as densely as hemp, but it's still a very sustainably grown crop. The natural fiber color is a light tan/gray. Louet sells their 'euroflax' linen yarn in an unbleached, undyed color, and they've told me that their retting is done naturally in the field.

Banana Silk
Banana ‘silk’ comes from the outer layers of the banana tree. It’s a continually growing source of fiber. Shangri-La Crafts sells an undyed version, and they say that the fibers are harvested by soaking the stalks until the all but the strong fibers have decayed. Elsewhere, I’ve seen yarn that’s like sari silk (made with banana silk fabric). Usually handspun.

Overview
Although rayon fibers are derived from plant materials, their production relies on chemical-intensive, industrial processing. Typically, the cellulosic fibers are dissolved in an alkali solution, which is pressed to remove water, mixed with carbon disulfide to make viscose, dissolved in another alkali bath, extruded through a spinneret, and hardened in a bath of sulfuric acid. This doesn’t sound very eco-friendly to me, especially when much of the production takes place in countries with little health and environmental oversight.

So it amazes me to see several rayons being marketed as green wonders. I give the manufacturers credit for using sustainable crops (e.g. bamboo) or reclaiming byproducts from other industries (e.g. tofu byproducts in soy yarns). But I can’t recommend any of these as green fibers. At least, not until individual manufacturers become more transparent about what, exactly, goes into their processes and how they are taking steps to make them more eco-friendly. The manufacturers of bamboo and soy yarns are just not there yet.

The one potential exception is lyocell, which is sold under the brand name Tencel. Lyocell is made from wood pulp. Its production is relatively energy and water efficient, and it uses non-toxic solvents that are collected and reused in a close-loop process (there's only one manufacturer of Tencel in the US, and its pretty transparent about its processing). But critics observe that harsh chemicals can be used in the finishing and dyeing because it's a fiber that doesn't easily bind with dyes.