Natural Environment Blog

The great thing about bamboo clothing is that, not only is it soft and comfortable, but it also has some great environmental benefits.

The Comfort Factor

Bamboo clothing is said to be softer than cotton, with a texture more like that of silk or cashmere.

Bamboo clothing also absorbs moisture quickly. It actually draws moisture away from your skin, so it’s perfect for summer months or warmer climates, as well as for vigorous activities such as playing sports, bush walking, running, cycling etc. Pure bamboo clothes also dry in about half the time as cotton clothing.

Bamboo clothes are perfect to wear all year round - they’ll keep you warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

The Environmental Benefits

The environmental benefits of bamboo clothing are also very impressive.

Growing Bamboo

Here are some environmental facts about growing bamboo plants:

• Bamboo plants can grow successfully without any fertilisers or pesticides.
• Bamboo grows extremely fast - it’s the fastest growing plant on the planet. Bamboo has been known to grow 3 - 4 feet per day!
• Bamboo doesn’t require a lot of water to grow.
• Bamboo is a very hardy plant - it can survive drought conditions and flood conditions.
• Bamboo plants release lots of oxygen into the air. A grove of bamboo release 35% more oxygen than an equivalent stand of trees.
• Bamboo is a very earth friendly plant. It can reduce soil erosion and desertization. It can actually improve soil quality in degraded and eroded areas.

Bamboo Fabric

Bamboo fabric is created from the bamboo pulp. It doesn’t need chlorine to bleach it and it can be dyed easily with minimal water requirements. Fabrics that don’t dye easily are often treated with harsh chemicals and much more water, so an organic fabric that dyes easy is generally better for the environment.

And of course, bamboo clothing is 100% biodegradable, so you know your old bamboo garments aren’t going to end up in landfill for hundreds of years along with the other non-biodegradable junk.

Bamboo clothing really is a comfortable and environmentally friendly choice!

Where can I buy Bamboo Clothing?

You might be able to find bamboo clothes at your local organic clothing store. Otherwise, there are plenty of place to order bamboo clothes online.

For example, Amazon.com has a variety of bamboo clothes and other bamboo fiber products.

You might also like to check the comments section below, for readers’ suggestions on bamboo clothing stores.

Tencel^® is the brand name for a biodegradable fabric made from wood pulp cellulose.

Tencel is created from the lyocell fiber, and is becoming increasingly popular as an eco-friendly alternative to fabrics such as polyester, nylon, and even cotton. In practice, many fabrics combine various fibers so it’s common to see Tencil combined with linen, rayon, lycra, micro denier polyester or cotton. So, some of these blends will result in a less-eco-friendly fabric.

Many people who buy Tencel products rave about it’s luxurious feel so this can only be a good thing for Tencel and other lyocell fabrics.

How Eco-Friendly is Tencel?

Manufacturing

Tencel / lyocell has quite an eco-friendly manufacturing process, with one or two possible exceptions.

The fiber is produced via process which uses a non-toxic solvent that is 99 percent recoverable and recyclable. Also, no toxic chemical products are produced during the process, which means there are no toxic fumes released into the atmosphere. Bleach is not required when manufacturing Tencil, which sets it apart from other fabrics such as cotton. So far, so good.

The biggest disadvantage of Tencil and other lyocell fabrics is that they don’t dye very easily. This may lead the manufacturer to use chemical processes, enzyme baths, or other treatments that aren’t eco-friendly.

Another disadvantage of Tencil / lyocell is that the fabrics have a tendency to fibrillate when wet. This may lead a manufacturer to treat it so that it doesn’t fibrillate. This treatment may not be so eco-friendly. If a manufacturer doesn’t treat the fabric, it will often be labeled as “dry clean only”.

Biodegradability / Recyclability

Tencil / lyocell is 100% biodegradable, and will decompose within 8 days under the right conditions. Products made from tencil and other lyocell fabrics can also be recycled.

Where can I buy Tencel Products?

Tencel products are becoming popular so you might find some in your local clothing store. You can also purchase Tencel products online. Here are some examples:

• Here are some tencel products at Amazon.com
• You can find some Tencel clothes at The Öko Box
• You can also find Tencel clothes ZonaClothes (order by mail or phone)

Ramie, also known as “China Grass”, is a flowering plant native to eastern Asia. For centuries, ramie fiber has been used for making fabrics and clothing. In fact, ramie has been used for clothes since at least 5000 - 3000 BC in Egypt.

Ramie fibers are one of the strongest natural fibers. Ramie can be up to 8 times stronger than cotton, and is even stronger when wet.

Ramie Fabric

Ramie as a fabric, can be a great eco-friendly alternative to using synthetic fibers or non-organic fibers. It is also very comfortable to wear and is highly absorbent. This makes it a great choice for warmer climates or summer months. Ramie fabric also has good stain resistance. It’s great in the wash too. It doesn’t shrink, can withstand high water temperatures, and it’s lustrous appearance actually improves with washing.

Ramie is low in elasticity and it does wrinkle easily. It is also quite costly to produce compared to other textile fibers, so this tends to raise the price of the end products.

Ramie can be used in a wide range of applications, including:

• Dresses and skirts
• Jackets
• Pants
• Shirts
• Curtains
• Upholstery
• Bed sheets etc
• Table cloths and table towels
• Sewing threads
• Handkerchiefs
• Parachutes
• Fire hoses
• Canvas

Ramie is often blended with other fibers such as cotton and hemp to produce fabrics with different characteristics.

Companies selling products made with ramie include:

• Australia’s The Earth Collection (who also have a distributor in the UK and Ireland)
• China’s Sichuan JTC Garments Co.Ltd (a subsidiary of Sichuan Cotton and Ramie Group)
• I also found some ramie apparel and ramie bedding at Amazon.com

Milk silk is a term given to silk that is derived from milk. Yep, I’m talking about silk - the fabric with a rich, velvety texture and feels very luxurious on the skin.

At this stage, it’s not known how environmentally friendly milk silk will be. That largely depends on how the silk can eventually be successfully produced (if ever). To date, I know of two companies that have experimented with or produced milk silk:

• In 2000, a Canadian company announced that it was on the way to producing spider silk from goats milk. By 2002, it had successfully inserted spider genes into cows and hamsters and planned to progress to goats. By 2006 the company had almost run out of money.
• Cyarn, A Chinese company has been producing fabric made from milk. To produce the fabric, the company dries the milk, then extracts its proteins. The proteins are then combined with a solution in a special machine to whirl the fibers together. After this, the fibers are spun into yarn, then woven into fabric. This process has been around since World War 1 but has always been very expensive. Modern technology has reduced the cost, but it’s still quite expensive. Cyarn has received the Oeko-Tex Standard 100 green certification for the international ecological textiles.

Milk silk/milk yarn still isn’t mainstream yet. It sounds like Cyarn is leading the way in this market though. Hopefully they can keep it green and who knows where it will lead?

You can buy milk silk clothes online from Piscotta Cashmere. I presume the fabrics have been produced using milk yarn from Cyarn.

Sometimes it seems that just about everything we buy these days ends up being bad for the environment. I mean, even the clothes we’ve all been buying and wearing for so many years have turned out to be bad for the environment…

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that wearing clothes is bad for the environment! The problem lies in the fabrics that are being used to make our modern day clothes. These fabrics tend to be far from eco-friendly. Here are some examples:

• Cotton: The production of (non-organic) cotton destroys farmland and pollutes waterways. The production of a simple T-shirt requires two pounds of pesticide!
• Dyes: Most common dyes that are used in fabrics contain heavy metals that can be harmful to animals, the natural environment, and ourselves.
• Synthetic polyesters and nylons: These are made from petrochemicals via a process of refining crude oil, which creates horrible pollution.
• Silk: Commercial silk is made by boiling the silkworms’ cocoons, then unwinding the single silk strand onto reels. This results in the silkworms being boiled to death in their cocoons.

What’s more, many fabrics cause further environmental problems when they’re dumped in landfill. Fabrics can typically take hundreds of years (or more) to break down in landfill.

But there is hope. Many major clothing companies are recognizing the environmental problems caused by traditional fabrics, and they’re starting to do something about it. These companies are now producing clothes that are made from eco-friendly fabrics.

Unfortunately, eco-friendly clothes still tend to be the exception rather than the norm. That’s why it’s so important for us, as consumers, to start searching for clothes made from environmentally friendly fabrics. The more of us that do this, the more commercially viable it will be for companies to use eco-friendly fabrics in their clothing lines. Here’s an example of one major clothing company doing just that.

It might not be long before we’re buying clothes made out of spider webs. Don’t laugh, a company in Japan is talking about creating socks, fishing lines, and stockings out of spider-web silk.

For many years now, scientists around the world have been try to find ways of mass producing spider silk. And now, a team of scientists at Shinshu University have had a breakthrough. They’ve devised a way of injecting spider genes into silkworms, which will result in a much stronger silk. This in turn, could lead to a new “super silk”.

Also, Grado Zero Espace and The University of California, have created the world’s first spider-woven fabric produced using modern processes. Apparently the spider woven fabric “feels like silk, is as elastic as nylon and is thirty times stronger than Kevlar”.

At this stage, it’s not entirely clear how eco-friendly these developments will turn out. But they are likely to bring spider web silk one step closer to the mainstream markets. And that’s got to be a good thing for the natural fiber market.