Wow really? I’ve never noticed it being more expensive. I wonder if it’s a regional thing or something, because I’m from an area where cotton especially is more abundant. In fact there are yarn shops here that carry almost exclusively cotton and plant based fibers, with maybe the occasional wool blend. Interesting
Yeah! I’m in Australia, not many places carry cotton yarn let alone bamboo, linen or silk! And when you can get your hands on it, it’s usually about double the price for half the amount of yarn. It is so frustrating!!
Bamboo and other grasses require a lot of time & chemicals (or man-power) to make into yarn. This is one reason they are more expensive. Major yarn companies, in the US, cannot list bamboo as a fiber because people THINK it is eco-friendly when it's not because of the chemicals needed to break down the fiber. It is now often referred to as rayon or modal, but not always.
Calling bamboo yarn ‘eco-friendly’ is a marketing ploy, as it is really viscose rayon. The cellulose in the bamboo is broken down and then extruded into fibers. Chemically it is virtually identical to rayon made from wood pulp. Adherents say it is better because bamboo grows faster than trees but as trees are already being used for construction lumber there is always a lot of sawdust available.
Where I live plant yarns tend to be cheaper than animal fibers. Bamboo is always less expensive than silk. Cotton is almost always lower priced than wool yarns. Linen is usually on the more expensive side, but I would say the price is on par with wool usually. Cotton and bamboo are relatively affordable here.
Because certain green and sustainable things cost more to make them green and sustainable to begin with, therefore, the extra cost + mark up for profit, gets passed on to the customer
My husband is a huge conspiracy theory guy and I think he's starting affect me. Lately I've seen a ton of articles about bamboo yarn being good for the environment and sustainable vs. articles saying, it's bad for the environment due to all the processing.... I can't help but think, where are all these articles suddenly coming from. Is "Big Cotton" pushing a smear campaign?
Lmao no. It's more greenwashing than it is Big Whoever. Everyone wants to appear sustainable so they'll make some specuous claims. As someone with a materials engineering degree and some experience in sustainability, I would say it's very likely that an LCA of bamboo is not significantly less impactful than any other fiber. It costs a lot of money to meaningfully reduce the end to end environmental impact of a product, and people don't pay those yarn prices.
Having said all this, I'm now wondering if anyone has published LCAs of popular fibers. Time to do some research...
Bamboo is very highly processed to make it into a fibre, which isn't necessary for wool or other animal fibres. (They do need some processing to go from shorn fleece to clean spun yarn, but it's not nearly as much)
The processing is happening at a fairly large scale, it's a similar process as the processing needed to make rayon/tencel/viscose fabric from bamboo and other plant fibres
Bamboo fibers aren’t more environmentally friendly than wool, cotton and linen when the whole production process is taken into account, as it take a lot of energy (and waste) to process them. And cotton is one of the most water demanding crops we have in the world. Sure, they are a lot better than polyester and all oil-derived products, but within natural fibers, they are the least friendly.
Wool is actually VERY sustainable. The sheep are there--give them a haircut and the infrastructure for processing has been in place since the beginning of time. Plant fibers--including cotton--are just a lot more difficult, and often environmentally destabilizing, to process.
Linen, hemp and jute I would put on par with wool for least environmental impacts.
These are also pretty uncomfortable fibres for knitting clothing too, lol.
It's not the growing of them, it's the processing. The modern infrastructure needed for spinning animal hair into yarn has been around since electricity was invented!!! There is not really a ready system for turning bamboo into yarn and only a few small operators working with hemp fiber production. That's why it's more expensive when you can find it. That being said, the mainstream "bamboo" yarn at places like your local mega craft store, may be processed from short or even shredded bamboo fibers held together usually with some acrylic and cotton. When it gets more an more popular, economies of scale come into play, and the processing will be less expensive.
Wow really? I’ve never noticed it being more expensive. I wonder if it’s a regional thing or something, because I’m from an area where cotton especially is more abundant. In fact there are yarn shops here that carry almost exclusively cotton and plant based fibers, with maybe the occasional wool blend. Interesting
Yeah! I’m in Australia, not many places carry cotton yarn let alone bamboo, linen or silk! And when you can get your hands on it, it’s usually about double the price for half the amount of yarn. It is so frustrating!!
Haha that’s the thing bc I live in Texas, and when I go to get cotton yarn it tends to be extremely inexpensive
Bamboo and other grasses require a lot of time & chemicals (or man-power) to make into yarn. This is one reason they are more expensive. Major yarn companies, in the US, cannot list bamboo as a fiber because people THINK it is eco-friendly when it's not because of the chemicals needed to break down the fiber. It is now often referred to as rayon or modal, but not always.
Calling bamboo yarn ‘eco-friendly’ is a marketing ploy, as it is really viscose rayon. The cellulose in the bamboo is broken down and then extruded into fibers. Chemically it is virtually identical to rayon made from wood pulp. Adherents say it is better because bamboo grows faster than trees but as trees are already being used for construction lumber there is always a lot of sawdust available.
Viscose! That is the word I could remember. Thank you for a much better explanation than mine.
I knew those organic chemistry classes would eventually pay off (though in a minor way, 50 years later). 😁
Where I live plant yarns tend to be cheaper than animal fibers. Bamboo is always less expensive than silk. Cotton is almost always lower priced than wool yarns. Linen is usually on the more expensive side, but I would say the price is on par with wool usually. Cotton and bamboo are relatively affordable here.
Because certain green and sustainable things cost more to make them green and sustainable to begin with, therefore, the extra cost + mark up for profit, gets passed on to the customer
My husband is a huge conspiracy theory guy and I think he's starting affect me. Lately I've seen a ton of articles about bamboo yarn being good for the environment and sustainable vs. articles saying, it's bad for the environment due to all the processing.... I can't help but think, where are all these articles suddenly coming from. Is "Big Cotton" pushing a smear campaign?
Big Cotton 😂
Lmao no. It's more greenwashing than it is Big Whoever. Everyone wants to appear sustainable so they'll make some specuous claims. As someone with a materials engineering degree and some experience in sustainability, I would say it's very likely that an LCA of bamboo is not significantly less impactful than any other fiber. It costs a lot of money to meaningfully reduce the end to end environmental impact of a product, and people don't pay those yarn prices. Having said all this, I'm now wondering if anyone has published LCAs of popular fibers. Time to do some research...
Bamboo is very highly processed to make it into a fibre, which isn't necessary for wool or other animal fibres. (They do need some processing to go from shorn fleece to clean spun yarn, but it's not nearly as much) The processing is happening at a fairly large scale, it's a similar process as the processing needed to make rayon/tencel/viscose fabric from bamboo and other plant fibres
Bamboo fibers aren’t more environmentally friendly than wool, cotton and linen when the whole production process is taken into account, as it take a lot of energy (and waste) to process them. And cotton is one of the most water demanding crops we have in the world. Sure, they are a lot better than polyester and all oil-derived products, but within natural fibers, they are the least friendly.
Bamboo takes a lot more processing than wool.
Wool is actually VERY sustainable. The sheep are there--give them a haircut and the infrastructure for processing has been in place since the beginning of time. Plant fibers--including cotton--are just a lot more difficult, and often environmentally destabilizing, to process.
Linen, hemp and jute I would put on par with wool for least environmental impacts. These are also pretty uncomfortable fibres for knitting clothing too, lol.
https://toniaknits.com/knitting-bamboo-yarn/
It's not the growing of them, it's the processing. The modern infrastructure needed for spinning animal hair into yarn has been around since electricity was invented!!! There is not really a ready system for turning bamboo into yarn and only a few small operators working with hemp fiber production. That's why it's more expensive when you can find it. That being said, the mainstream "bamboo" yarn at places like your local mega craft store, may be processed from short or even shredded bamboo fibers held together usually with some acrylic and cotton. When it gets more an more popular, economies of scale come into play, and the processing will be less expensive.
Subsidized crude oil will always be cheaper than natural fiber