[Pil-pc-oceania] Closure of CSIRO scour

[Kerry Dawborn]

It might be worth looking at for small businesses in places like India 
and south america, africa etc - there are a lot of small businesses 
using appropriate, small-scale technology - and enterprises which make 
equipment for them. If you look under human powered machines for fabric, 
or fibre, you might find some small-scale machines that can be used by 
small processing operations...

kerry

Daniel Rossi wrote:
> On 12/04/2008, at 7:59 AM, Fern Rainbow wrote:
>
>   
>> I asked Long tops (small business in geelong  that processes wool)  
>> about the closure of the scour.  They said that it's having great  
>> impact.  Their prices for scouring and carding have increased by  
>> nearly 50% from december last year, from $12 a kg to $20 a kg... I  
>> do wish that I'd got my wool processed last year :( as if I get it  
>> processed now it's going to cost almost double the price.  The  
>> closure of the scour will discourage a lot of small businesses, like  
>> myself.  It was already a fair amount, now it's just too much.
>> Most farmers already just sell their wool overseas, the closure of  
>> the scour will just encourage this.  We may not see any locally  
>> processed and made garments in the near future :(
>>     
>
> So it goes overseas to be processed, and then returns as a garment.
>
>   
>> Where do your local garmet makers get their wool processed/ or their  
>> processed wool from?
>> Australia already doesn't have the processing facilities for other  
>> natural fibre, such as hemp, and now we are losing our processing   
>> facilities for wool as well.
>>     
>
> Yes this is really bad news, my gf is learning fashion design and she  
> has to order all her natural fibre fabrics like hemp, bamboo, organic  
> cotton, soy silk from the US who most probably get it from China. So  
> much fossil fuel travel thats why I called it 'Clothing Miles' hahah.  
> I wonder if there is ways to install modular processing systems  
> directly on the farms, which means fabric can be made on site or it's  
> processed for making fabric / threading ?
>
> I do know there used to be a local organic cotton mill or something  
> like that which shut down so there isn't anything here to my  
> understanding so I have to buy my clothing from the US :\
>
> Being able to make your own clothes from locally grown and sourced  
> material would be a liberating thing.
>
>   
>> How on earth can EDAPs be enacted when we can't process our natural  
>> fibres locally?  When our clothes etc can't be made locally? And all  
>> our fibres have to go overseas to be processed.  It's ridiculous...
>>     
>
> Free trade with China ?
>
> _______________________________________________
> Pil-pc-oceania mailing list
> Pil-pc-oceania at lists.permacultureinternational.org
> http://jasper.cmsarchitects.com/mailman/listinfo/pil-pc-oceania
>
>   
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://jasper.cmsarchitects.com/pipermail/pil-pc-oceania/attachments/20080413/c149827a/attachment-0001.html