Though Spring is right here, the chilly temps persist, particularly throughout our morning walks. One of the tough features of residing a vegan, cruelty-free life-style is discovering heat vegan clothes and accessories that aren’t made from wool, alpaca, or cashmere.
As I’m vegan for moral causes in addition to for the surroundings, I keep away from shopping for artificial fibers— particularly new polyesters that are constituted of plastics. There’s a cloth available on the market which may be an answer for eco-conscious animal activist customers — Seawool. Right here’s the whole lot you might want to know concerning the vegan wool various.
The high-quality breathable “wool” is made from crushed oyster shell composites and recycled polyester. Whereas oyster shells are a byproduct of a residing animal some vegans, referred to as ostrovegans do eat oysters. Oysters are non-sentient, that means they don’t have a central nervous system, which is critical to really feel ache.
When somebody shoots oysters at a uncooked bar, the shells normally go straight into the rubbish and head to landfills. In Taiwan, at the least 160,000,000 kilograms of oyster shells, a dynamic, useful biomaterial, are discarded every year.
Fortuitously, the Creative Tech Textile crew that created Seawool yarn conceptualized a method to upcycle oyster shells right into a sturdy and heat material. They’ve rescued oyster shells from the meals business to repurpose into Seawool. The fiber is the results of a decade of testing by the Industrial Expertise Analysis Institute.
The environmentally-conscious textile is a game-changer for the style business that’s striving to go inexperienced. It’s constituted of recycled PET plastic bottles which were scavenged from oceans after which floor right into a powder. It takes 60 recycled post-consumer plastic bottles to create a kilogram of Seawool. The recycled PET (rPET) powder is then blended with the excess oyster shell composites. The complete course of is extra sustainably sound than that of wool sweaters and leaves a smaller carbon footprint. A sweater incorporates about 5 oyster shells and eight post-consumer water bottles.
I examined Seawool within the freezing temperatures of Antarctica
I’ve been testing out a Seawool mocha-hued turtleneck sweater and grey hat from Frank and Oak for the final three weeks in Antarctica. I’m cruising across the southernmost continent— my seventh and last to go to — with the sustainably-minded Hurtigruten Expeditions on the corporate’s 18-day Antarctica voyage on the battery-hybrid MS Roald Amundsen ship. Which, has additionally served glorious vegan meals together with gnocchi in sage sauce, Flowfood burgers, and vegan milkshakes. The temperatures have dropped beneath zero levels Celsius on a number of events and my Seawool has saved me heat and comfortable.
To the contact, Seawool is heat and fuzzy, very similar to wool from land animals. The truth is, it’s mentioned to have 99 % comparability to wool. The material is insulating, serving to to lock in warmth on frigid days. It’s additionally wrinkle-resistant which is great when packing for cold-weather locations similar to Antarctica. The White Continent, as anticipated, has been very moist — with fixed drizzle, snow, sleet, and hail. With out fail, my Seawool items at all times dry earlier than my different gear. They’re fast, dry, and antistatic.
The revolutionary fiber can be utilized in winter climate clothes and accessories offered by Coster Copenhagen, Mountain Khakis, and Huckberry. Seawool may also be used for winter-weather bedding.
