Hobbies & climate change

 Hey so-

A bit of background info before my big blog post - I'm an artist working in games, and I have a lot of craft related hobbies such as knitting, spinning yarn, ceramics, etc.

This isn't something I expect that the majority of people think about - although hopefully I'm wrong - but I've just been considering the impact of my hobbies and lifestyle on the environment.

It's all felt a bit climate-changey lately (along with the general shite feeling with the whole genocide being live streamed on social media) in the UK - summer is the gift that keeps giving with various mini and normal sized heatwaves/droughts since, what was it, May or possibly even April?

By the way, you can email your MP about what's happening in Palestine via this website.

As an aside, I can't wait for autumnal temperatures 🍁 🍂 

So anyway, I start thinking about my individual actions and things that I could do to help; yes, I know that one private jet flight would basically nullify a lifetime of me avoiding buying plastic bottles, but I still want to do what I can because it feels right to me.

A little disclaimer, these are just my personal thoughts/opinions, this is not a researched piece! If you have any relevant information you'd like to share on this or even just your own thoughts on your hobbies/practices then I'd love to hear about it in the comments. 

Art (traditional)

Aside from the initial material usage and emissions from creating fairly small things like paint, paper, etc. it feels like art is a fairly low impact hobby.

I suppose it depends a lot on your choice of surface and media; for example, gouache might be considered lower impact than acrylic paints since acrylics contain plastics and therefore won't biodegrade. That's not to say that gouache pigments are angelic - I haven't investigated pigment origins, etc. Although I suspect cobalt is not such a nice one (this is a similar sentiment in ceramics).

The end product of an art practice - the artwork - might either be discarded (yet this could be considered low impact if it's a sketch on paper being recycled, etc) or kept for display for an indefinite period of time, also not too bad in terms of impact.

Canvases, wood boards and other surfaces can also be painted over and reused if the artist desires. I have also seen the artist Little Tiny Egg get her wood boards from painting from the charity shop; sanding down old images (often seem to be cringe quotes) and then painting over the top.

I feel like as long as one isn't going wild buying every art supply then the impact of art creation doesn't feel too egregious. 

Art (digital)

The main chunk of our impact here is probably right at the beginning; with the purchase of the computer and any other hardware needed (drawing tablet, general tablet, any extra external storage device, etc). I would say that most people already have some form of computer and/or tablet in their home.

One only needs a very basic PC to start creating art - at least if we're talking about pixel art, which I would consider a very accessible way to start creating art digitally. It's even possible to do pixel art on a smartphone. 

As an aside, I use aseprite as my favourite pixel software...

For digital painting one might need something a little more powerful.

Anyway, aside from that initial acquisition plus the emissions from running the chosen device, there's not much additional environmental cost here. I suppose you could consider the emissions from cloud storage if a person stores their work online for backup or their online portfolio.

AI

I'll mention briefly that I know AI exists and has many supporters, but I'm happy not using it as I want to do the fun and challenging part of art making; and I do not want to use something that's so environmentally destructive (it uses loads of water and energy) and full of plagiarism issues. 

By the way, if you're an artist wanting to protect your work from AI scraping, maybe check out Glaze.

Textiles

Yarn Related Pursuits

I've been knitting since 2016 and spinning yarn since 2018. Overall I'd say that while making your own clothes can become quite consumption based (making things just because, buying tons of supplies when they're not really needed), I think this is quite low impact in the scheme of things if you're trying to buy no plastic and/or low mileage and/or second-hand supplies. I'm not trying to shame folks who don't do this; sometimes the budget or situation doesn't allow for it; but when it is possible then I think we should try our best to do this!

For a while now I have been avoiding buying yarn which has nylon or other plastic based fibres in it. I try to avoid superwash yarn (basically yarn which has been coated in plastic to allow it to go into the washing machine), with occasional slip ups. This means that the yarn has hopefully (depending on the origin, processing, etc) not been too environmentally damaging during its production, and if it's non superwash and all natural materials the end product can be composted at the end of its lifetime, hopefully after having been mended as much as possible.

Wool and other animal fibres are an issue for some people. For now I try to avoid silk (or get cruelty free silk fibres; yes, they exist) and tend to buy less yarn overall, trying when I can to source my wool yarn from small businesses who are transparent about their sources. Some are from fibre flocks (sheep raised just for their wool), some not so much (meat sheep). This is something I'm still thinking about and am considering moving towards only slaughter free flocks or working more with plant fibres. For the time being though, I need to use what I already have in my yarn stash!

Sewing

Honestly I haven't sewn anything in ages, although I want to get back to it. I pretty much exclusively have all natural fibre fabrics in my stash and want to keep it that way. I want to get through the fabric I have in my stash first of all - mostly a few nice bits of linen - and then reassess later. Overall I'd say for me this is currently low impact since I'm not consuming anything extra right now and my fabrics come from a UK seller (although my favourite linens are produced in the EU I believe, and other fabrics from there are from other places around the world).

Ceramics

I'm right at the beginning of my ceramics journey, so admittedly my knowledge of its sustainability benefits/issues is limited.

Rather than the rambles above, I have a bunch of questions when it comes to ceramics sustainability. I think I'll need to go off and research a bit after this post!

• Starting with the raw materials: of course, clay and other ingredients like minerals for glazes need to be dug up, and I guess refined. This might be a silly question but I wonder if clay could be considered a renewable or finite resource? I imagine we're not likely to run out of it any time soon but I would be curious to find out!
• Unfired waste clay can be reworked and recycled, which is great!
• Materials generally come from the earth and natural resources, so I wonder what the breakdown process is for discarded ceramic objects?
• Some fired ceramics can be ground up and added to unfired clay as grog, which helps the clay withstand heat changes in the firing process. So that's one small way that fired ceramics can be recycled. I'm not sure if glazed ceramics are disqualified from this, though. Since there's other chemicals thrown into the mix...
• Generally speaking there aren't really any concerns around animal welfare since pretty much none of the materials I'll use are animal products - as far as I'm aware - I'm sure some animal products have been used here and there in ceramics (bone china?) but I doubt I'll encounter them.
• Cobalt mining is a human rights concern so I think I should avoid this ingredient. 
• When I know more about ceramics I'd love to investigate using local materials for glazing or even clay itself - this will be a way off though I think.
• Firing clay takes a lot of energy and many pieces need multiple firings. For now I'm sharing a kiln at the studio so my individual impact is low. If I somehow got my own kiln, we have renewable energy at home so that feels a little better in this regard. 
• Plastics only really seem to come into play in terms of packaging for raw clay and probably ingredients too but this could be mitigated somewhat by buying in larger quantities (doesn't work so well for clay as I think I'll have to get 12.5kg bags usually), reusing packaging for drying clay more slowly etc, and if it comes to it washing the soft plastics and 'recycling'* at the supermarket.

* I highly doubt that supermarkets in the UK properly recycle this soft plastic waste and I want to investigate it further.

Overall I think this hobby will not have too heavy an impact as long as I don't go wild producing things... If somehow it became a side hustle then I might need to reassess and see what improvements could be made. 

End

If you stuck around on this strange hobby audit thing of mine, well done and thank you 😆I guess overall the ways I can make any creative hobby more sustainable are:

• Not over buying supplies; use what I have first
• Use natural and non-plastic materials where possible so the results can biodegrade/compost at the end of the item life cycle
• After the initial learning phase (which I feel often creates lots of dud projects), focus on some more complex, longer term projects - I think of this more for my textiles projects