Human Hair & Sheep’s Wool: A Tale of Two Textiles

In today’s show, an introduction to the wool series, Betty and Trev respond to a podcast episode called ‘Wearing Hair’ from ‘Articles of Interest’ by Avery Trufelman. We discuss the concept of wearing human hair textiles as an alternative biomaterial as spearheaded by the Dutch company ‘Human Material Loop’ asking… is it vegan to wear human hair? We go on to unpack some of the inherent ethical issues with sheep’s wool as a material and critique the wool advocacy of author and knitting influencer, Clara Parkes.  Music played: Hair – The Cowsills: https://archive.org/details/the-cowsills-hair. Lachlan Tigers – The Bushwackers Band (1977): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjorT4nQvs4 . Flash Jack from Gundagai – The Bushwackers (2020):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWJprPwyUqQ. Freedom of Species Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3TJQujKYjGFoFP6LhBbaTS?si=6ghUWmzkQpyv...  Listen to ‘Wearing Hair’ from ‘Articles of Interest’ here: https://articlesofinterest.substack.com/p/wearing-hair Human Material Loop and information about human hair textiles: https://humanmaterialloop.com/ . https://zsofiakollar.com/human-material-loop/ Other links and references: https://edgarsmission.org.au/animal/baarack/ . Kumar Kumawat, T., Sharma, A., Sharma, V., & Chandra, S. (2018). Keratin Waste: The Biodegradable Polymers. Keratin. IntechOpen. doi: 10.5772/intechopen.79502 . https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/population_and_sustainability/pdfs/shear_destruction_final_report.pdf  .   You can subscribe to 3CR here: https://www.3cr.org.au/subscribe and you can nominate Freedom of Species as the show you want to support.