Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

heckthepolice OP wrote (edited )

You're probably right about it not being very important to be able to make clothing; it's just an idea that occurred to me and I figured it might merit some discussion.

And yeah, non-vegan options like leather definitely have advantages over the vegan alternatives, especially for footwear. That's something I find interesting, that sometimes following strict veganism might actually end up being more harmful to animals and the environment than a technically non-vegan option and there may be cases where you have to take a more holistic approach rather than just following a simple rule like "no animal products". I hadn't really considered footwear much when writing the post, but now that you mention, I've realized that footwear is probably the one think that we actually would have to make post-collapse since it gets worn down through use, so that was kind of a silly oversight. I think it might be viable to avoid non-vegan footwear in some places, like where sandals are viable. And we could probably repurpose various scrap materials (rubber from tires for soles, fabric and leather/animal products that are already laying around, etc.). That said, we may very well end up having to rely on nonvegan footwear in many places.

My personal inclination regarding animal slaughter to get materials would be:

  1. Don't raise animals to be slaughtered; either hunt or use what you can when the animals you take care of die (or find animals that have died in the wild, though they're likely not to be usable).

  2. Only kill animals when you have to.

  3. Kill as painlessly as possible.

  4. Make use of every part of the animal you possibly can.

2