mattheus wrote:Shoes? If you mean leather, we can definitely manage without that. Various textiles make quite a good shoe for most purposes (I think vegan DMs are available?!) I confess I do like a proper leather shoe though. Only worn for interviews/weddings/funerals mainly these days ...
Most faux leathers for shoes derive from plastic and come with all the usual problems of the petro-chemical industry. It's recently been reported faux furs, which are similarly produced, cause more environmental problems than real fur even on a pro rata basis.
Ben@Forest wrote:Most faux leathers for shoes derive from plastic and come with all the usual problems of the petro-chemical industry. It's recently been reported faux furs, which are similarly produced, cause more environmental problems than real fur even on a pro rata basis.
Ben@Forest wrote:Most faux leathers for shoes derive from plastic and come with all the usual problems of the petro-chemical industry. It's recently been reported faux furs, which are similarly produced, cause more environmental problems than real fur even on a pro rata basis.
What do you wear Ben?
Right now nearly all lycra!
Lycra? I just happened upon this bit of info, which I certainly didn't know! Lycra is apparently made by a company called Koch Industries, which has a pretty lousy environmental track record: see here.
Koch Industries, a private company, is the United States’ 17th-largest producer of greenhouse gases and the 13th-biggest water polluter, according to research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst - ahead of oil giants Exxon Mobil, Occidental Petroleum and Phillips 66. The conglomerate has committed hundreds of environmental, workplace safety, labor and other violations. It allegedly stole oil from Indian reservations, won business in foreign countries with bribery, and one of its crumbling butane pipelines killed two teenagers, resulting in a nearly $300m wrongful death settlement. The dangerous methane leakage, carbon emissions, chemical spills and other environmental injustices enacted by Koch’s companies have imperiled the planet and allegedly brought cancer to many people. But it took Koch’s own struggle with the disease for him to care about cancer and fund research to combat it.
I must admit a slight prejudice - in that I'm no lover of lycra myself. I have a pair of shorts and shirt made of the stuff, but I never wear them. Find them too uncomfortable. Cotton for me!
Suppose that this room is a lift. The support breaks and down we go with ever-increasing velocity. Let us pass the time by performing physical experiments... --- Arthur Eddington (creator of the Eddington Number).
Spandex, Lycra and elastane are all the same stuff and are made by various companies. If you buy it branded as Lycra, that is when you are buying a Koch product. Elastane / Lycra is in all sorts of stretchy fabrics, not just the clingy sports stuff.
661-Pete wrote:Lycra? I just happened upon this bit of info, which I certainly didn't know! Lycra is apparently made by a company called Koch Industries, which has a pretty lousy environmental track record:
And that's part of the issue with synthetic products. What's the most popular shoe at the moment, must be Skechers, are they recyclable? Not that l can find. If you go onto the Skechers website and look at their environmental credentials they promote the green measures at their factories and that their packaging is FSC certified - but about the shoes themselves? Zip.
I'm currently wearing high quality leather shoes, they will last much longer than a pair of Skechers and apart from the very bottom sole are (eventually) biodegradable. In fact the last pair, which l wore pretty much daily for 8 years, haven't even been thrown away yet, they sit under my work desk for use when l cycle to work.
I wear leather shoes too (apart from trainers, wellies, etc). Leather uppers, at any rate: the soles are usually synthetic.
To be honest, my renouncing of meat doesn't extend as far as renouncing other animal products. No doubt there are vegan shoes around which are guaranteed to be environment-friendly - at a price! For me, leather shoes last at least twice as long as their non-leather counterparts - and I find them more comfortable.
I also hold my trousers up with a leather belt. Same reasons.
Question. We all know that the Western world's love-affair with meat - and beef especially - is seriously harming the environment. And I think that this catastrophic "development of the Amazon" trope which Bolsonaro keeps rabbitting on about, means primarily, more beef cattle farms - to meet the world's hunger for beef. But is leather production, in itself, also contributing to this global disaster? How many beef carcases, slaughtered for meat, actually end up as leather for our shoes?
My feeling is, if we (i.e. we Westerners) all cut down meat intake to a level which the Earth can sustain without plummeting into meltdown, we would still be able to produce enough leather to satisfy the world's demands for the stuff. Right or wrong?
Of course, those who oppose meat eating on ethical grounds would still have to renounce leather. That's their choice.
Suppose that this room is a lift. The support breaks and down we go with ever-increasing velocity. Let us pass the time by performing physical experiments... --- Arthur Eddington (creator of the Eddington Number).
Well she's arrived. Already there's been a bit of controversy over the fact the return crew has flown out to the US to sail the yacht back.
I'm genuinely curious as to how Greta is going to get back and secondly how she'll attend similar events in the future. The fact she's attending this event shows that live video isn't enough to hit headlines. If she's still hitting headlines in 18 months my money is on her taking flights.
Ben@Forest wrote:Well she's arrived. Already there's been a bit of controversy over the fact the return crew has flown out to the US to sail the yacht back.
I'm genuinely curious as to how Greta is going to get back and secondly how she'll attend similar events in the future. The fact she's attending this event shows that live video isn't enough to hit headlines. If she's still hitting headlines in 18 months my money is on her taking flights.
Yup.
And she got several minutes of prime-time TV coverage last night - just by getting off a boat! I can't see her getting that amount of air-time from arriving by plane.
661-Pete wrote:Lycra? I just happened upon this bit of info, which I certainly didn't know! Lycra is apparently made by a company called Koch Industries, which has a pretty lousy environmental track record: see here.
Besides the environmental track record, the Koch brothers have spent billions lobbying against environmental legislation, indirectly influencing governmental policies through 'think tanks', lobbying for education reform that resulted in the privitisation of education, and lobbying for or funding organisations that lobby for laws that criminalise protesters, not just in the USA, but other countries in which their businesses operate.
I would be very surprised to find that organisations such as Civitas, the New Schools Network, and the Policy Exchange do not receive significant donations from trusts or foundations linked to the Koch brothers. Since they do not reveal all of their donors, we will never know. And they don't often do such things directly. They will instead, give a foundation money on the condition that some amount of it is given anonymously to another foundation, trust, or think tank.
For example, through Donors Trust, they support the American Friends of the Institute of Economic Affairs, for which the sole purpose is to give money to the Institute of Economics Affairs, which is a pro-Brexit free market think tank based in Westminster. https://iea.org.uk/about-the-brexit-unit-1/
“In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility.” ― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
Ben@Forest wrote:I'm genuinely curious as to how Greta is going to get back and secondly how she'll attend similar events in the future. The fact she's attending this event shows that live video isn't enough to hit headlines. If she's still hitting headlines in 18 months my money is on her taking flights.
Greta is hitching back to Europe on a yacht in the hope of reaching the climate conference moved from Chile to Madrid that wrongfooted many non-flying young activists: https://apnews.com/f3d8bbba68ad48cbaa8fb67f49f4493d
MJR, mostly pedalling 3-speed roadsters. KL+West Norfolk BUG incl social easy rides http://www.klwnbug.co.uk All the above is CC-By-SA and no other implied copyright license to Cycle magazine.
She won't fly back because of her beliefs, but instead a crew has to be flown out to sail the yacht back? How does that work in relation to carbon emissions?
Hope she's related to "Unsinkable Mollie Brown". IGICB (without flying) MM
