The Green Directory - Australia's Green Business Directory

by Kylie Gusset for Yarn Magazine

Worldwide, people are beginning to think harder about what it means when they buy goods made overseas. This applies to all things great and small, from food to furniture, and is increasingly beginning to apply to that most Australian of products, wool, as well. When you have a hankering for yarn that is either hard to find in Australia or too expensive here, what do you do?

When we go online and purchase yarn from overseas cheaper than what we can get here, what price are we really paying? It is not only the dollar cost of the item, but the need to include the fuel for transport, cost of processing etc. What is the real environmental impact of those ‘Made in China’ labels at your national retail chain store?

We Are What We Do, a UK-based group aiming to inspire people to use their everyday actions to change the world, have released the book Change the World 9 to 5. Step one in the book is to find out where your lunch is from. Why? Because an average orange from the US travels 15,000 kilometres to get to you here in Australia, creating five times its own weight in greenhouse gases.

Locally, we’re already seeing changes, such as an increase in the numbers of farmers’ markets and a national campaign for food labelling, encouraging consumers to choose Australian-grown produce.

Luckily, we have a good supply of Australian-grown fibre to choose from when we reach for some yarn, but we’ve asked Carbon Planet, a South Australian–based environmental consultancy that conducts carbon emissions audits and retails carbon credits, to help us work out the carbon emissions, and equivalent dollar cost of our yarn-purchasing habits.

We looked at modes of transport and calculated the carbon emissions for different types, based on 1000 kgs of product.* For ease of research and calculation, the total environmental cost of the yarn from (sheep) back to (human) back, has not been included. Only the travel from raw product to finished product bought by the consumer has been calculated.

Calculating the carbon cost of air freight is more than just calculating the carbon emissions of the flight, because emissions from planes cause around three times the global warming potential that the same emissions would have on the ground.

Example one: Buying direct from the farm gate (e.g. in Victoria)

Total distance from farm to processing mill and back is low, in one case just 144 km, for an output of 20 kilos of carbon. To offset that amount of travel would cost you $0.04.

Example 2: Buying from an online retailer in Canada

In this case, merino wool is grown in Australia, ocean freighted to Italy for processing and spinning; the yarn is then ocean-freighted to Canada and air-freighted back to Australia, total distance travelled is 44,696 km and an output of around 80,000 kilograms of carbon. In other words, that little ball of ‘bargain’ yarn from overseas has created around 80 times its own weight in greenhouse gases. To offset that amount, it would cost $1,840.

Even with overseas air freight swapped for international surface shipping [aka seamail –Ed.], there’s still a sizeable amount of carbon emissions with 1,700 kilograms of carbon an an offset cost of around $46.

Dave Sag, CEO of CarbonPlanet, says, ‘I don’t want to advocate a caveman existence, but we need to look at the real damage done and the free ride that globalisation has had so far. We need to be at the very least offsetting the 80 tonnes of carbon emissions for every tonne of yarn air freighted through purchasing carbon credits.

‘Does yarn really need to be air freighted?’ he asks. ‘In terms of improvements, international shipping is also quite a contributor to carbon emissions, so can we improve international shipping so that routes are optimised?’

The 100 mile fibre diet
Canadian knitter Jen Lam has already asked herself these very questions. Inspired by the 100 Mile Diet (in which two other Canadians spent a year eating only foods grown within 100 miles from their home), has challenged herself to use only yarns and fibre from within 100 miles of her home.

‘For me, it hasn’t been doing without’, she says, ‘it’s been about needing to equip myself with knowledge, because that’s power for consumers. I’ve been meeting farmers and learning about what they do and about breeds of sheep. For example, some farmers breed sheep for meat, and the fleece usually ends up as landfill. Now with [increasing] local demand, farmers are being educated and providing the fleece which pays for their shearing costs.’

The final result of Jen’s fibre diet is far from a boring brown jumper. Her handspun, hand-dyed, handknitted garments are works of art.

There is no reason why Australians can’t take on Jen’s challenge: just being aware of the choices we make will definitely have an impact and can change how yarns are produced, labelled and retailed. As Jen succinctly put it: ‘I hear you’ve got sheep over there!’

Knowledge is power
•     Find out what else you can do at, www.wearewhatwedo.org.au

•    For more inspiration, visit Jen Lam’s 100 mile fiber fest blog at www.100milefiberfest.blogspot.com/

•    Contact Carbon Planet, www.carbonplanet.com to buy carbon credits to help offset environmental damage and for more info on how to prevent environmental harm

•    An Australian fiber resources map is in development at http://shortenurl/ozfiber. You can contribute!

*1000 kg is the standard for their calculations—imagine 1000 knitters in Australia purchasing 1kg of yarn from overseas each year.

One carbon credit, in simple terms, represents one tonne of carbon dioxide either removed from the atmosphere or saved from being emitted. A tree absorbs carbon dioxide to produce food for itself to build its structural components, and it takes about 5 trees planted for a period of 100 years to sequester one carbon credit.

Carbon Planet’s guide to buying yarn

Think about the projects that you’re making and their uses—a pure wool hat is far more useful, practical and environmentally friendly than the garish acrylic baby blanket. Do you really need to buy new air-freighted yarn from overseas? Here are some other options:

•    Make a pledge to work from your stash first.

•    Learn more about what’s available locally, and check the origins of the raw product and milling—while you might think it’s an Australian yarn from start to finish, mills and specialty fibres from overseas are often involved. See our Advertisers Index (page 54) for many locally available options.

•    See if you can substitute a locally made yarn, swap, recycle, or purchase secondhand locally instead of creating a need for new yarn.

•    Buying locally produced and manufactured yarn from the local store instead of spending your dollar overseas is a good option—overseas yarn stocked in local stores is generally shipped by sea, thus lowering the environmental impact.

•    Make some small personal changes, such as shopping for handspun yarn from local spinning guilds

•    If you buy from overseas, consider doing an occasional bulk order with friends, rather than each of you doing several small purchases.

•    When you travel overseas, do buy locally—supporting local fibre artisans is a great source of souvenirs. [For more on this, see Yarn on a Shoestring, page 18.]

•    Choosing surface shipping over air freight where possible will save a whopping 99.5% of carbon emissions, even if it does mean waiting for that ‘must have yarn.

knitting in public

by Kylie Gusset for Yarn Magazine

www.artwearpublications.com.au

Posted on The Green Directory by ArtWear Publications, who also publish information on plant dyes, felt and knitting.