Despite its luxury associations, cashmere is shockingly bad for the environment. As demand for cashmere has increased over the years—especially for lower-priced cashmere—the quality has decreased, as well as the industry’s ethics. This isn’t a new problem; a 1999 New Yorker article titled “The Crisis in Cashmere” outlined how the democratization of cashmere had led to dicey production practices in Mongolia and cheap, coarse fibers. Almost 20 years later, we’ve also found that the enormous herds of cashmere goats are overgrazing to the point where parts of Mongolia are becoming a desert, which threatens the other endangered species that live there.
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