A Comparison of Vegan and Cruelty-Free Yarns

Dear users, dear authors,
is it important to you to know where your yarn comes from? Do you look into vegan and cruelty-free clothing?
It would be great if we could have a good discussion on this topic. 

I haven’t worked with real wool in a long time, ever since I saw a report on mulesing in sheep. You’d think they’re just sheared—and certainly not killed—for their wool.
But you have to consider the sheer volume of wool produced; the animals are treated very badly in the process.
Cotton or bamboo yarns, for example, are good alternatives.

I don’t buy “industrial yarns” anymore.
Whether it’s cotton or bamboo 🤷—these are also produced in massive quantities, and considering the “manufacturing process,” that can’t be particularly good for the environment either..... 😉
Of course, no sheep suffer from this....
I discovered a small shop that buys wool from local small-scale farmers. It’s all natural—they even offer “dog” wool there, though only in small quantities, since the Caucasian Shepherd Dog (which herds the sheep there) needs its fur in the winter, too.... 

It’s hard to know what to believe these days. A while back, I saw a report stating that sheep’s wool is no longer in demand; farmers can barely sell it and are therefore looking for other uses—for example, it’s also being turned into plant fertilizer.
Virgin wool is usually a major component in sock yarn; otherwise, I don’t really need it.
Yes, growing large quantities of cotton or bamboo also takes up space—it’s the same problem with the vast areas of land used to grow soybeans. Ultimately, it comes down to a calculation to figure out which option is less harmful to the environment. But feeding and clothing several billion people will probably never again be possible without some impact on the environment.
Dog hair has been a topic before—years ago, we had a German Shepherd who shed like crazy. Then I met a woman who asked dog owners to give her the brushed-out hair; she’d hand out a paper bag—about the size of a bakery roll bag—to everyone she met while walking her dog. I laughed at her back then and said I’d need at least 20 of those bags a week—so she started stopping by our place regularly to pick up the collected fur in larger cardboard boxes. So our dog is probably still living on in some sweaters out there. 🤣