Rule

I mean we can also make long lasting clothes out of natural fibers without hurting animals.

Not everywhere. Many places its much more sustainable to make clothes from the animals you are eating and it makes sure that you aren’t wasting any of the life you’ve taken that you need to survive.

Wool is one of those natural fibers that can be harvested without harming the animal. Even if you end up eating the goat/sheep, it can provide a few coats of wool before hand.

Yes this is true but a lot of places can’t mantain a sheep herd, because it is too cold or to dry for grasses and food for the sheep

My fiance has a skin allergy to wool

I’m privileged enough to have a choice in that regard, haven’t eaten any animals in months. Sometimes I’m a naughty boi and eat some chicken tho.

Chicken coat get

You also don’t need to eat the animals to survive.

True…and you don’t need to live in a house, or use the Internet, or have a bank account, or have a computer/mobile…all things that have caused catastrophic damage to the environment and killed countless animals.

One has to draw a line somewhere- perhaps you shouldn’t be holier than though just because you draw the line at “I don’t want to see the evidence of the death”

It’s more sustainable to eat the animals you make clothes from.

Maybe YOU don’t have to eat animals to survive. What a privilege u you have that you live in a place where vegetation can be grown in your area or more likely shipped there cheaply(not free of harm to the environment or people\animals). But your experience is not universal there are places on earth that people live where that is not an option. And some of those people have been living there sustainably for 10s of thousands of years. Not to speak of people who’s body needs meat to live because of some other reason. You can not eat animals and that’s fine but it doesn’t replace the science of how to stop environmental damage.

Vegans in western cultures have access to dietary supplements derived from non-animal sources. That’s basically impossible without access to modern industrial food processes.

If we’re talking about cultures without ready access to plant fibers for clothes, then they’re not going to have vegan supplements, either.

But one could also use linen, hemp, ramie/urtica/nettle. However, they are more complicated to process and as the results are textiles, they are not windproof or water repellent.

Organic and recycled cotton is a lot better, and hemp and linen are also pretty good. And if you’re worried about hazardous pesticides the majority is used while growing feed for animals.

And cow feed is also grown with tons of pesticides and you need much more of it for less tissue at the end.

I have hard time seeing clothing with a bigger environmental than leather.

Of course, but there are more options than leather, like bamboo, linen, and lyocell.

The tanning process is no joke either.

You can indeed. But growing cotton has already resulted in environmental changes beyond my comprehension.

I guess the first step should be to adapt a habit of clothes repair

Growing cattle has also had a massive impact on the environment. And you often need more land for animal based materials because you both need land for the animals and the land to grow food for the animals. With cotton at least you just need land for the cotton.

I dare you to travel to Uzbekistan and see for yourself what’s needed to grow cotton for the whole region.

Why is this always brought up, stop spreading this. Animals usually are not fed grain unless it’s harvesting time. We also do not grow food just to feed them. The grain we feed animals is shit you cannot eat. It’s roots/stalks/stems/bad/rotted plant matter. It’s the leftovers from the greens we can consume. Most animals also are raised on land that is not suitable for crops, rocky/hilly/weak topsoil land.

I mean you can make leather from all kinds of skins. And there’s one… animal… that we have a particularly large amount of on earth and we regularly have to get rid of a significnat number of deceased of without currently re-using their skin. Hrm… cool idea for an industrialist horror movie…

This. We need to get back to repairable shoes and patching clothes. It’s fine to keep a “good set” that doesn’t have patches, but we wear clothes like no humans before us. It wasn’t uncommon to see patched clothes just 60 years ago.

Very few materials compare to the durability of animal leather. When you need leather, you need leather.

Even as a cheeky vegan I find it hard to disagree with you on this one. Leather will absolutely last a lifetime if taken care of. I think you can still get close, there’s a lot of very durable upholstery fabrics for instance but you’re likely making other trade offs.

Leather is a by-product of dairy and beef production, there is vastly more leather than we use for garments. Most of it gets processed into pet food or makeup or automotive lubricants or who knows what

You are on the right track. Hides are a byproduct. Nobody kills animals for them.

Once the hides are turned into leather, they are no longer biodegradable.

Natural leather is absolutely biodegradable.

Veg tanned leather is impervious to bacteria. Fungi can damage it, albeit slowly.

Chrome tanned leather is similar but way more resistant. Probably 99% of the leather (except shoe soles) people deal with is chrome tanned.

If you try to put it in your compost you are going to be sad.

isnt there this mushroom based fakeleather stuffthingie?

this for example:

https://mylo-unleather.com/material/

ok the animation is kinda gross… if you find fungi gross, but i think these are just fun little guys also, i guess its more of a thing in the future when there is more competition in the market of mycelium based textiles or whatever and prices arent that crazy…

What the fuck… devilstrand from Rimworld is real??

Your mom is real, she’s nice and did a good job making you

I have no idea what this means lmao

well, i havent tried that stuff myself so cannot speak about their properties, bu~ut looking at the pictures… did they just glue the stuff on a pair of pants? ._.

I’ve looked at some plant based leather alternatives, and most of them mostly contain polyurethane or a similar plastic. Additionally, they tend to be not very durable.