Unlike the other popular knitwear material, wool, which comes from sheep, cashmere comes from goats. As goats shed their coats when summer starts to set in, the fine hairs underneath their thicker coats are combed out. It then gets sorted by hand, and sent away to factories to be cleaned and refined, and the final product is then sold. Of course, not all cashmere is created equal, and not all of it is sustainable cashmere. As with a lot of natural materials, sourcing those cashmere fibres can have a negative impact on the animals it comes from, and the planet, too. If the goats are sheared too soon in the year, they won’t have a thick enough coat to protect them from the elements. A higher demand for cheaper cashmere means more goats, and the land they live on is suffering because of that. More hungry goats means less grass, which can turn that once-green land into a desert. There’s a human impact, as well, with questionable conditions for the goat herders, and less pay as cashmere gets cheaper. But, you can still find cashmere that’s sourced from the right places and produced in mindful ways by companies that make an effort to take proper care of the people, animals and environments that contribute. Read on to learn how four...