Aimed at people who don’t know where wool comes from, it’s 100% plastic. Yes, plastic.
So any garment you wash will release microfibres into the sea. It’ll never decompose.
You’re supposed to believe that sheep shearing is violent and cruel. There are imbeciles out there that work in an unprofessional manner while shearing, but that’s not the case overall.
Sheep don’t suffer from having their fleece removed.
Left on, the fleece can become a home for fly eggs and the subsequent maggots which can eat the sheep. Chemical treatments are available to prevent that happening. It’s much better for the sheep, the land and the farmer to avoid chemical use.
Don’t be fooled. Wool is a sustainable material, one we should make more and better use of.
Any garment you wash will release microfibres into the sea. It’ll never decompose.
This is very important.
And you need to wash acrylic wool garment more often than natural wool. They get stinky way more easily.
In my almost-decade of owning sheep, there have been exactly two(2) bad shearers try to start up in the area. Know what happened? The first farm they went to called every other shepherd in the area and said “This guy cut one of my sheep and didn’t think it was a big deal, don’t hire him.” And neither of them ever did business in the area again.
Some farmers are less conscientious than they should be about taking care of their stock, and the occasional tiny nick will happen, but no one is going to hire a shearer who is a) incompetent enough and b) uncaring enough to actually injure the animals to the point of bleeding, let alone the kind of horrors the internet claims.
Also, most breeds of sheep will literally die if they go too long without being sheared. PETA (and let’s face it, most of this anti-wool stuff can be traced back to deliberate misinformation from PETA) doesn’t care if sheep die, they have openly stated that they would prefer every domestic species that can no longer survive without humans go extinct rather than live in “"slavery.”“
Humans and sheep have lived together for over ten thousand years, they’ve been domesticated longer than dogs! Their lives consist of doing whatever the heck they want (for the most part they only want to walk, eat, sleep, play, and make lambs) while being fed and cared for, for the low price of having their hair cut once a year. Why would anyone boycott this natural, biodegradable fiber humans have been using for so long to the benefit of both species, in favor of plastics that are killing the planet??
[ID= synthetic yarn with labels that say “Happy Sheep” on the front and “No sheep were sheared to make this yarn, so rest assured they’re all snuggly and warm in their own wooly jumpers tonight.” on the back /end ID]
Not to mention shearing most often happens in the spring, specifically to prepare them for the warmer months so they’re, you know, actually comfortable. It isn’t exactly ideal to be “snuggly and warm in your own wooly jumper” in the middle of the fucking summer you piece of shit company.
Sheep also need shearing in the summer because of diseases and parasites like my friend here :)
But yeah please buy real wool or at least not plastic.
Man I wish universal basic income was a thing so people could just leave jobs they’re unhappy at and wouldn’t have to worry about not affording their basic needs while they look for something new or so that people could actually explore their passion projects like only the rich and powerful can just take time off to write or work on art or go back to school and even if you’re having mental health problems you can’t just take an extended vacation a lot of places still don’t consider mental health as actual illness anyway fuck capitalism am i right brother?
The best part of UBI is that you don’t need to see a cent of that money to enjoy the benefits it would provide. Just the shear ability to be able say “I don’t have to work here if I don’t want to” would give ALL workers the bargaining power to demand more from their employers, higher pay, more benefits. It would be amazing!
good news if you’re a European citizen: there’s a European Citizens’ Initiative currently collecting signatures to establish unconditional basic income in the EU!
i quote,
Our aim is to establish the introduction of unconditional basic incomes throughout the EU which ensure every person’s material existence and opportunity to participate in society as part of its economic policy. This aim shall be reached while remaining within the competences conferred to the EU by the Treaties.
[…]
We request the EU Commission to make a proposal for unconditional basic incomes throughout the EU, which reduce regional disparities in order to strengthen the economic, social and territorial cohesion in the EU. [x]
for it to pass, it needs at least 1 million signatures total + minimal participation threshold in at least 7 countries. as of today (September 9th 2021) it’s at a little bit above 146k signatures total and 6 more countries need to reach the participation threshold
if you’re a EU citizen please consider signing here (it’s a quick process! you enter your nationality then follow the instructions, took me 5 minutes yesterday)
if you’re not or can’t sign please consider passing on the info to EU citizens you know!! if we manage to get this implemented, it could really improve quality of life for everyone living in the EU
Even though i dont live in europe i hope they make this happen
They’re also shooting for 100% renewable plastic sources by 2030! All of the soft plant/leaf elements in sets right now and going forward are made out of bioplastic made from sugarcane, and they’re working on getting the regular hard plastic bricks out of that, too.
They’ve done it, actually! The full bricks are in the prototype stage now, and are expected to be 100% biodegradable without the need for a commercial compost facility. It’s very cool. Right now they’re testing the durability and playability of the bricks and seeing what needs to be revised/reworked on their final model.
So its that easy huh
Of course it is
Actually, this isn’t “easy” and is huge news. You see, Lego is absolutely meticulous about their quality control. Their standards for manufacturing are stupidly high, as are their safety requirements. You know that distinctive “click” when you pop two Lego bricks apart? They engineered that. That sound is so distinctive that it can be used to tell genuine Lego bricks from counterfeits and it’s a sound that would be based on shape and material.
Furthermore, one of the hard requirements for a Lego brick is that it must be compatible with any other Lego brick. If I buy a set today and pull a set from the 1980s? Those bricks would fit together perfectly. This requires a huge amount of precision engineering and controls on manufacturing quality. (I can’t remember the source, but I’ve at least heard that once the brick molds wear to a certain point, they’re pulled from the line and either melted down or turned into construction material for Lego HQ. Point being, no one is getting their hands on a worn Lego mold)
Recycled and non-petroleum plastics are different from other plastic. The chemistry is different. The timing and process to use them is different. This has been a reason why more companies haven’t moved to them, because there’s a drop in quality for material (so they claim).
What Lego just did is completely obliterate that argument. The corporation with some of the strictest quality control requirements for plastic just kicked the basic foundation of the “bad quality” argument out from under it, because if they feel confident enough to guarantee the same experience as using a brick from over 40 years ago, if they are confident enough that they can meet their own metrics at a huge industrial scale….
I like to write, so I planned to reblog writing advice for later personal use. But I've been reblogging more and more political-, gaming-, and humorous posts.
