Fibershed’s green livelihood program is designed to facilitate new ideas, and innovations that directly support and improve our region’s regenerative and community-driven textile supply chain—thus directly increasing a diversity of living wage jobs in our community.
Our 2013 Green Livelihoods activities include:
- Wool Inventory Map of Northern California
- Feasibility Study for a Fibershed wool processing facility
- Development of FiberLab, a prototyping & education facility to develop a comprehensive demand analysis for locally farmed textile goods
Fibershed is consulting with projects that embrace our cradle to cradle vision:
Textile Recycling Mill
The textile recycling mill project will keep our precious natural fibers in play for years beyond the life of a single garment. The team is developing a prototype textile mill to transform waste fibers into new yarns. By designing a scalable process, the project will treat waste fibers while remaining accessible to smaller users (such as knitting shops) as well as have the potential to serve an entire urban community. Preserving the fibershed’s biological diversity while clothing urban populations means recycling locally farmed textiles (once they are too worn for wear) into yarns that can be re-processed into useful clothing.
Wool Works Project
70,000 pounds of wool is wasted in just two Northern California counties each year. To address this basic issue of resource mis-management, the Wool Works Project (a collaboration within a crucial wool processing hub in our region) is a solution-based effort that is designed to handle a portion of the wool processing bottleneck in our Fibershed, through producing 1,000 pounds per month of fine gauge yarns.
Viriditas Cotton Mill
Vreseis’s Viriditas cotton spinning project aims to process our regions organic naturally colored cotton. The focus has been questions of scale, and engineering queries have been focused upon how to process fibers into useful coarser yarns. This project is still in the planning stage.
Contact us at fibershed@gmail.com for further details relating to these projects.
Our Shared Vision for Economic & Environmental Equity:
The Fibershed community aligns itself with the value system outlined in the Seven Principles for Fair and Green Economy, a document recently produced by the Northern Alliance for Sustainability (ANPED).
A Report on the first Fibershed Wool & Fine Fiber Symposium
The symposium that took place on November 17th in Point Reyes Station was well attended, and the feedback we have received is very positive. If you would like contact information for the symposium presenters, here’s a downloadable PDF: speakers-list. We are grateful to Juliet Braslow of the University of California Cooperative Extension for publishing the following article and video about the symposium.
Fibershed bringing ‘farm-fresh’ clothing to the region
by Juliet Braslow
Many of us are familiar with the concept of a foodshed (the region where food is produced and the paths it travels to its final consumer), and the importance of buying local food in order to support local farmers, businesses, and resilient local economies. Marin has a thriving foodshed with many strong local linkages, but few of us apply this local logic and purchasing power to the clothes we wear every day. This is where Rebecca Burgess and Fibershed step in. Like a food or watershed, a fibershed is a geographic region where all the fibers and dye plants for garments can be sourced. Burgess believes that “fiber will follow food” into the public’s consciousness. Read more…
I have a tremendous amount of very good llama fiber. I process some of it and sell some of my rovings and fleeces, but still have a huge excess as I can not afford to process it all, and shipping costs up to a coop in the North (Washngton and Oregon) are prohibitive. Do you have any suggestions?
Ruth
Hi Ruth – I just joined the Fibershed, and saw your message. There is a newer mill in my hometown of Oakhurst, CA – http://www.millcreekfiberworksinc.com, they’re also on Facebook, and I am now driving up monthly to visit my father. I’ve been thinking of dropping fiber off there for those interested. I have a small truck with a camper shell, so the fiber would be protected during the drive. I could also bring product back in the following months’ visit…would this interest you? I’m heading up this weekend, and hope to talk to people at the mill about doing this – chiefly, would they hold onto processed fibers for a month until I picked it up again, etc… Let me know your thoughts :-) Some in the community are in the process of forming a Central Ca. Fibershed, and I hope the mill will be involved/join – I’d love to support their efforts also, and will find out more this weekend.
Take care,
Christine
[...] It took a while, but she is emerging from what she calls “hibernation.” “Now, I work with one mill in Japan and I have a US spinner for my cotton again,” she said from her biodynamic ranch in California’s Capay Valley, where she talked to me while bottle-feeding lambs from her multi-colored merino sheep. “What I am best at is R and D. I really know how to grow, and I really know how to design yarn and fabric. I am very excited about working with communities both inside and outside our local fibershed.” [...]