KID’S PAGE

By Trish Penny

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shopping for clothes involves tricky decisions about fit, color, style, and price.  If a growing number of companies have their way, you’ll start checking labels for another key detail:  environmental impact.

 

Earth friendly fabrics are in.  It’s already possible to buy shirts made from bamboo and socks made from corn.  In the future you may be able to purchase clothes made from chicken feathers or rice straw.

 

The companies that make such fabrics are interested in sustainable development.  This means trying to provide things that people need while protecting natural resources and preserving biodiversity. So, scientists are now looking for new ways to make fabrics for clothes that are good both for your image and for Earth.

 

Making clothes and shoes traditionally involves harsh chemicals and lots of energy.  Some fabrics, such as cotton, leather, and wool, begin as plants or animal parts.  But that doesn’t mean they’re gentle on the environment.  Cotton plants are often smothered with noxious chemicals to keep away the bugs and weeds.

 

Other fabrics are born in laboratories, where scientists create molecules called polymers and make synthetic materials.  Polyester is made from a polymer called polyethylene terephthalate (PET) which can be molded into soda bottles or drawn out into long, thin threads.  Textile companies weave or knit PET threads into fabrics that are silky, sturdy and dry quickly.

 

The problem, from an environmental viewpoint, is that most synthetic fabrics are made from petroleum, which must be

 

extracted from the ground. Accessing, transporting, and processing oil is expensive, and the supply is limited.  Still, petroleum based materials appear in exercise clothes, shoe soles, plastic zippers, buttons, dyes and many other products.

 

To overcome this reliance on petroleum, some companies have experimented with creating polymers from substances such as corn sugar, then weaving the resulting threads into fabrics.  Other companies have developed products from recycled materials.

 

Efforts to use recycled materials haven’t always been successful. When fleece first came out in the 1990’s it was scratchy and flimsy.  Advances in technology have made it possible to convert a larger variety of old plastic bottles and worn clothes into much thinner threads.

 

A textile scientist Yiqi Yang has figured out how to make yarn out of cornhusks, chicken feathers, and rice straw.  All three are agriculture by-products that usually end up in the trash.  The process involves chemical reactions that break down the raw materials into fibers, followed by cleaning.  Then the fibers are spun into yarn , which is used to make fabrics.

 

Yang predicts that rice-straw and cornhusk fabrics will resemble linen or cotton.  Chicken feather fabrics will wear like wool.

 

Clothes made from farm waste are still years away from hitting the stores, but clothes made from organic or recycled fabrics and products made from coconut, bamboo, and corn sugar are already available.

 

Simply by choosing carefully how you get dressed in the morning, you can help decide Earth’s future.

 

 

 

EARTH-FRIENDLY

FABRICS