Here you are.
- Couldn’t have said it (better) myself
“do something for mother nature cause the bitch has been good to you.”
- Wear Milk?
So there I was, minding my own business, when this Seattle P.I. article befell me:Fabric options have expanded thanks to innovations in processing that can convert unexpected candidates such as milk, seaweed, pineapple, corn, bamboo, yak and the ever-green hemp into soft, alluring textiles… ::full article
Milk? Yes it’s true. The idea of fabric made from milk protein has been around since World War I…
…when the Germans, interested in other sources for fabric, discovered milk’s potential for cloth, he said.
“People observed that when milk dries out it makes a tough film. There’s a potential to make fibers out of that,” he said.
After getting rid of milk fat, the milk is curdled and the proteins are separated and concentrated into a viscous solution, he said.
That solution is forced through a capillary and is then hardened into a solid fiber that can be spun around a bobbin, he said.
It requires 100 pounds of skim milk to make 3 pounds of milk fiber, he said.
For those reasons, including its durability and the proliferation of other fabrics such as polyester, he said, milk fabric never really became popular.
One maker, in China, is Cyarn Textile:
Cyarn milk protein fiber dewaters and skims milk, and manufactures the protein spinning fluid suitable for wet spinning process by means of new bio-engineering technique, and new high-grade textile fiber is made by combining them. In April 2004, it passed Oeko-Tex Standard 100 green certification for the international ecological textiles.
Now I’m confused on whether the process skims milk (leaving drinkable skim milk and fiber as a biproduct) or turns skimmed milk into fabric (leaving nothing drinkable). If it’s the former, there’s an obvious by-product synergy waiting to happen.
Now what was that about seaweed and pineapple?
