![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
As much as I would love to live plastic-free (or mostly plastic free), I, like most people, don't have the time and money to devote to it (not to mention the environment is still full of microplastics and everything else you buy was still made with plastics anyway). This article, which I read last night, had me thinking a lot about consumer activism (ie boycotts and petitioning brands for changes to their policies) vs consumer choice activism (the notion that you can 'do something' to save X simply by paying slightly more for a more morally pure alternative to something you were going to buy), and how this encourages the false impression that consumer choices can make a difference on a global scale when they really can't because the vast majority of use is driven by industry, and only collective action (= structural and regulatory reform) can significantly change them.
But it also reminded me of the plastics that I probably can dispense with and am now trying to replace in my life, namely: polyester fleece.
We use a lot of throw blankets because 1. I'm always cold and 2. cats hog blankets and 3. bunnies need blankets in their homes (4 per bunny right now: either ½ blankets or ½ bath sheets), and the nice wool ones are in the closet because they can't be washed in the washing machine, but our cats are genetically predisposed to barf on everything.
For the same reason, we can't have any rugs that won't fit in the washing machine, and a lot of them are cheap nubbly fleece bathmats because the pets all love them.
Problem: the winter is long, the air is hella dry, and the bunnies, who are about 75% hair by volume, spend their time exposed to lots of fleece blankets and rugs, and this produces so much static. You'd think that wool would be bad, but actually wool is way less staticky for them than fleece.
We can, and should, replace the rugs with rag rugs and other woven cotton ones and the blankets with hand-knitted washable wool blankets (and cotton towels for the bunnies), but that's a long-term goal as cotton rugs are more expensive and blankets take time to knit. (I'm not willing to buy ones that are the wrong colors. And not all rag rugs are created equal - they have to be the tightly woven kind.) Knitted cotton blankets are the best in the summer, but they don't cut it for Finnish winter, even indoors. At least not for me.
The last problem are those fuzzy chenille socks, which I wear whenever I'm at home. These aren't easy to replace because standard wool socks are meant to be worn over other socks, but the cotton socks that you put underneath them aren't warm and soft enough for me: cotton just doesn't feel warm on the skin. Sock yarn needs to be hard-wearing, though, and that tends to work against being soft and squishy. Synthetic fiber inclusion helps the yarn to wear better, and many fiber blend yarns are able to increase the softness, but they won't be warm or breathable enough if the synthetic portion goes above 25% or so, in my experience. I will have to do some research into the sock-knitting field and hope there are some good yarns for the purpose.
But it also reminded me of the plastics that I probably can dispense with and am now trying to replace in my life, namely: polyester fleece.
We use a lot of throw blankets because 1. I'm always cold and 2. cats hog blankets and 3. bunnies need blankets in their homes (4 per bunny right now: either ½ blankets or ½ bath sheets), and the nice wool ones are in the closet because they can't be washed in the washing machine, but our cats are genetically predisposed to barf on everything.
For the same reason, we can't have any rugs that won't fit in the washing machine, and a lot of them are cheap nubbly fleece bathmats because the pets all love them.
Problem: the winter is long, the air is hella dry, and the bunnies, who are about 75% hair by volume, spend their time exposed to lots of fleece blankets and rugs, and this produces so much static. You'd think that wool would be bad, but actually wool is way less staticky for them than fleece.
We can, and should, replace the rugs with rag rugs and other woven cotton ones and the blankets with hand-knitted washable wool blankets (and cotton towels for the bunnies), but that's a long-term goal as cotton rugs are more expensive and blankets take time to knit. (I'm not willing to buy ones that are the wrong colors. And not all rag rugs are created equal - they have to be the tightly woven kind.) Knitted cotton blankets are the best in the summer, but they don't cut it for Finnish winter, even indoors. At least not for me.
The last problem are those fuzzy chenille socks, which I wear whenever I'm at home. These aren't easy to replace because standard wool socks are meant to be worn over other socks, but the cotton socks that you put underneath them aren't warm and soft enough for me: cotton just doesn't feel warm on the skin. Sock yarn needs to be hard-wearing, though, and that tends to work against being soft and squishy. Synthetic fiber inclusion helps the yarn to wear better, and many fiber blend yarns are able to increase the softness, but they won't be warm or breathable enough if the synthetic portion goes above 25% or so, in my experience. I will have to do some research into the sock-knitting field and hope there are some good yarns for the purpose.
