Shelter News - a thread for new shelter talk

Whiteburn

Thru Hiker
At the end of the day you could say that there's been little original design since an early homolid first stuck a stick up under an animal skin to keep the rain off their bonce.......ever since 'man' has just been copying, modifying, adapting, etc as different materials present themselves.
 

oreocereus

Thru Hiker
The fly is a mega efficient use of the (hideously expensive) fabric with essentially zero waste and like 4 cuts.
On that note YMG have started documenting the weights of fabric waste from their gear. Bug bivy was over 50% of the finished weight in waste. The 2p swiftline is over 33%
 

oreocereus

Thru Hiker
If it's cuben hopefully they make seam sealing tape from the offcuts, that's what I do.
He’s just posted a few silpoly bits to his Instagram, but he said when he has weights of all the waste he’s going to include it on the main website. I assume it doesn’t include any useful offcuts (eg stuff sack sized pieces) as I asked how recyclable, and apparently most of the coatings make recycling impossible.
 

SteG

Thru Hiker
He’s just posted a few silpoly bits to his Instagram, but he said when he has weights of all the waste he’s going to include it on the main website. I assume it doesn’t include any useful offcuts (eg stuff sack sized pieces) as I asked how recyclable, and apparently most of the coatings make recycling impossible.
Educate me please, what's his motive in posting how much non reachable waste there is?
 

oreocereus

Thru Hiker
He’s making a point of accountability. Like most outdoors manufacturers these days they have a statement about caring for the environment yada yada. But they seem a bit more genuine in actually trying to make changes for the case of sustainability (they donate 1% of profit to environmental causes, are one of the only makers using recycled silpoly).

Weighing and being transparent about the waste means both the manufacturer and customer cannot as easily ignore the issue of an incredibly wasteful society and manufacturing system.

It’s a bit tokenistic for sure, but it does potentially help start a conversation and set a precedent for more transparency among gear makers regarding their environmental impact.

It’s probably somewhat insignificant relative to the scale of other social changes that need to happen, but I don’t think anything that makes someone conscious of the waste and impact of a luxury purchase is a bad thing.

cynically I suppose it might help “brand build” in the same way Patagonia have a lot of positive media through their social and environmental policy. And it might also justify prices (because you can see you’re not just paying for x yds of finished fabric, but ~50% more than actually ends up in your shelter).
 
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SteG

Thru Hiker
He’s making a point of accountability. Like most outdoors manufacturers these days they have a statement about caring for the environment yada yada. But they seem a bit more genuine in actually trying to make changes for the case of sustainability (they donate 1% of profit to environmental causes, are one of the only makers using recycled silpoly).

Weighing and being transparent about the waste means both the manufacturer and customer cannot as easily ignore the issue of an incredibly wasteful society and manufacturing system.

It’s a bit tokenistic for sure, but it does potentially help start a conversation and set a precedent for more transparency among gear makers regarding their environmental impact.
Thank you for that. So he's helping getting the ball rolling,and trying to set an example. So 50% waste is a lot yes, and am I right in thinking Cuban fibre is not enviromentally friendly? If so, then those more environmentally conscious than me are going to avoid his products, and may use his firm as some form of target, yes? If so it's quite a brave move for him to become more transparent I would of thought.
 

oreocereus

Thru Hiker
Probably not, If anything it’d be positive press due to the positive press. He’s using the same materials as anyone else, and as far as I know one of the only manufacturers to use recycled silpoly for a “product” (you can buy recycled fabrics for diy use).

basically if it were to put you off buying, it should be enough to put you off buying new from anyone (except maybe manufacturers that use more renewable materials at much much heavier weights).

Nylon, poly and cuben fabrics are all various shade of “bad” as they’re derived from oil. Which is worse is probably a matter of semantics. Though silpoly and silnylon use coatings which may be worse than uncoated DCF.

recycled silpoly and silnylon sounds like it should be greener (and they claim more environmentally friendly coatings), but the process of recycling plastic into a fiber is hugely energy intensive - so I’m not sure how the environmental “cost” weighs up.
 

cathyjc

Thru Hiker
On that note YMG have started documenting the weights of fabric waste from their gear. Bug bivy was over 50% of the finished weight in waste. The 2p swiftline is over 33%

That is a big % of waste and isn't helping his bottom line.

I can imagine silnylon and silpoly need to be cut a certain way to "behave properly" in the finished article - so yes waste is inevitable.

BUT DCF isn't the same - you can cut pieces in a variety of ways without altering it's performance in the finished article - you can even patch bits together to make a bigger piece OK. So waste can be minimised. Even small bits can be turned into stuff sacks etc. - see what @paul does.

He could offer some of the waste bits for sale - there's folks on here would be glad of bits to make stuff and practice on.

PS. My background is as a dressmaker and if I have more than a few scraps (<5%?) left after cutting a garment out I think I've not been clever/careful enough :angelic:.

PPS. Many years a go a family friend took me around their small factory - making clothing on contracts for Levis/company uniforms etc. He showed me how skilled the pattern layers were - if they could lay up and save 1/2" on each garment that was yards when making hundreds of garment = profits. It's all done by computer now but the lesson was very clear.
 
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oreocereus

Thru Hiker
Yeah, well I wonder if he’ll tinker with designs there? Taking the duplex as an example, it’s a really neat example of efficient patterning - but it does mean it compromises some on performance perhaps. I get the impression YMG don’t aren’t aiming for the same market. Unlike a dress or whatever, there’s less room to minimize less waste with stylistic flourishes I guess? So it may be harder to have a high performing, lightweight product that is more efficient for material use. Remember the Audience here will pay absurd money to have less fabric on their tent ;)

i assumed most companies were using scraps of the right size for stuff sacks, reinforcement patches etc already. I assumed (but didn’t confirm) that the “waste” was deemed unusable in the ordinary sense. The picture on Instagram looked like the bin of a paper shredder.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CGNvaMnl0kC/?igshid=vkfdlt9ub7zd
 

cathyjc

Thru Hiker
Yeah, well I wonder if he’ll tinker with designs there?

i assumed most companies were using scraps of the right size for stuff sacks, reinforcement patches etc already. I assumed (but didn’t confirm) that the “waste” was deemed unusable in the ordinary sense. The picture on Instagram looked like the bin of a paper shredder.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CGNvaMnl0kC/?igshid=vkfdlt9ub7zd

He's also got to cost his time - maybe sorting out the useable bits isn't profitable ?
The bin pictured does contain a load of narrow scraps which are pretty useless. The bigger bits maybe not ?
 

oreocereus

Thru Hiker
Could sell random scrap packs on his website like lots of retailers do, containing random cuts etc
I know hilleberg do this, but they’re all large pieces of scrap I believe? Eg people who’ve bought one of the “random bag of fabric lucky dip” from them have made tarps or bivvys from what I’ve seen.
 

Enzo

Thru Hiker
I think it's worth thinking about
'cynically I suppose it might help “brand build” in the same way Patagonia have a'

I'm reading https://www.amazon.co.uk/Virtue-Signaling-Essays-Darwinian-Politics-ebook/dp/B07Y29NV9P
At the moment, discusses the evolutionary adaptiveness of signaling behaviour, companies and people gaining prestige by signaling virtue, like sustainable production for example
probably has a lot to do with moral progress historically.
Even if it is cynical, if it works....
 

Odd Man

Thru Hiker
I think it's worth thinking about
'cynically I suppose it might help “brand build” in the same way Patagonia have a'

I'm reading https://www.amazon.co.uk/Virtue-Signaling-Essays-Darwinian-Politics-ebook/dp/B07Y29NV9P
At the moment, discusses the evolutionary adaptiveness of signaling behaviour, companies and people gaining prestige by signaling virtue, like sustainable production for example
probably has a lot to do with moral progress historically.
Even if it is cynical, if it works....

I haven't read the book (but sounds like something to put on my list), but based on that it's basically similar to the idea that if you say you're something enough times, you start to believe it yourself and start act like it too. Whether it's delusion in negative cases or aspiration in positive cases, from a thought to reality it's not far fetched, regardless what the motivation is.

Fake it till you make it. Dress for the job your want, not what you have. etc.

Which reminds about a IT specialist I was working with. One day he and his partner showed up to work wearing grey suits and kept doing that every day. Maybe they learned about the aforementioned mantra? The only problem was that he would wear a backpack with the suit, which looked a bit like a school boy dress code. But the worst thing probably was that he wore worn out colourful socks and Birkenstocks like he did when we looked like a coder. Combining those three things send a very mixed message, and it wasn't professionalism. His partner wore proper shoes and had a shoulder bag and went on to become a top manager.
 

Enzo

Thru Hiker
Its not really (or at all) a self help book. It's evolutionary theory.
In David Buss's massive cross cultural survey of mate preferances, he showed heartwarmingly , that No1 for both men and women was kindness.
It seems adaptive to signal virtue, the byproduct could be, as MLKjr said
'the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice'
Definition of virtue is clearly important here!

Miller is best known for 'the mating mind' where he argues that human intelligence, creativity etc is analogous to the pea cocks tail, the result of run away sexual selection, rather than the result of natural selection.

Apologies if I've ever so slightly gone off topic again..:eek:
 

Odd Man

Thru Hiker
Its not really (or at all) a self help book. It's evolutionary theory.
In David Buss's massive cross cultural survey of mate preferances, he showed heartwarmingly , that No1 for both men and women was kindness.
It seems adaptive to signal virtue, the byproduct could be, as MLKjr said
'the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice'
Definition of virtue is clearly important here!

Miller is best known for 'the mating mind' where he argues that human intelligence, creativity etc is analogous to the pea cocks tail, the result of run away sexual selection, rather than the result of natural selection.

Apologies if I've ever so slightly gone off topic again..:eek:

I didn't take it as such, more like that's a concept what the self help authors base their books on.
 

Enzo

Thru Hiker
You prefer untrustworthy, cruel and callous people?
Or are you saying you don't like company's pretending to be virtuous to get a business advantage?

I dunno, the faking I find distasteful, but if they for example fake an interest in producing a more efficient car, and the best way of doing that is producing a more efficient car, then I'm not sure the difference between faking and genuine is all that important. The downside is if they are faking you can't use there actions to predict future behaviour, other than to know they'll be blown about by public opinion.
 

oreocereus

Thru Hiker
Yeah, within the scope of our capitalist society, I don't have much issue with someone trying to make their business practices less harmful/more sustainable because it's a "good thing to do" and then using it as marketing spin to produce a profit/offset the losses that might come from more expensive but more sustainable practices.

There's an underlying issue of "would they still do a x positive thing" if it wasn't possible to spin it for financial gain. And certainly all the businesses that market themselves as "green" or "socially responsible" with very little substance are pretty reprehensible.

But in this case, the business actually seems to making some genuine efforts to make positive change - at least more so than most ultralight manufacturers.

I often have an impulse to sneer at Patagonia's branding of their "progressive" social and environmental business practices - but given that they do more than nearly any other big outdoor or clothing brand, they're hard to criticise. At least, without a deeper and broader criticism of capitalism and notions of ethical capitalism.
 
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Rog Tallbloke

Thru Hiker
You prefer untrustworthy, cruel and callous people?
Or are you saying you don't like company's pretending to be virtuous to get a business advantage?

I dunno, the faking I find distasteful, but if they for example fake an interest in producing a more efficient car, and the best way of doing that is producing a more efficient car, then I'm not sure the difference between faking and genuine is all that important. The downside is if they are faking you can't use there actions to predict future behaviour, other than to know they'll be blown about by public opinion.

More the latter than the former.

A lot more energy/landfill/emissions are saved by keeping my 22 year old car running than by replacing it with a slightly more efficient new car every 7 years. But they don't build cars that will last 22 years anymore, because it's bad for trade.

Nothing screams "Fake!" louder than a hybrid with twin sports exhausts.
 
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