Saturday, April 28, 2007

indestructible socks

I would like to preface this post by stating categorically that I am not a footwear fetishist, but I have recently been thinking about socks.

A few years ago I set about removing a bunch of irritations from my life - one of the first to go was pantyhose - damned awful things they are. So, I pretty much gave up wearing skirts and now wear trousers most of the time. Which brings me to the socks. Another thing that really annoyed me was not having socks that matched, so I bought a whole lot the same. I don't know what they are made of, but they are pretty close to indestructible.

So - is it a better idea to buy something manmade that will last for a really long time, or to buy natural fibres like cotton or wool which have a much shorter life? The benefits from a compacting point of view is that I may not have to replace them in this lifetime, but who knows what the process was made for making them? But then, how much more resources (particularly water) would be used to make many pairs of replacement wool or cotton socks?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I heard someone did a research study on Cloth Nappies vs Disposable. (water consumption vs petroleum based products etc)

I found a reference to the research here;

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/its-the-bottom-line-on-going-green/2007/03/17/1174080223540.html

It is a completely different scenario perhaps we need to champion similar sock research. It can be done