I have a degree in Environmental Science, and have always cared strongly about the environment. As such, sustainability is something very important to me, so I wanted to dedicate a portion of this site to the topic.
Faux fur is not a sustainable material- nor is it easy to source in an ethical way. The majority of faux fur is produced in sweatshops, which exploit their workers with low pay and hazardous conditions. Shops that distribute faux fur for fursuit-making are not transparent about where their stock comes from, making it difficult to find an ethical source to purchase from.
The "fur" itself is formed from plastic polymers which eventually break down into microplastics, polluting the environment. Faux fur naturally sheds hairs over time, leaving bits of plastic all over the place... it's not much, but it can add up over time.
I don't want to work with that sort of material. There don't seem to be any promising alternatives yet, either... So I'm going to use up the faux fur I currently have, and only buy "new" faux fur secondhand from folks that already purchased it. Eventually, I will retire from fursuit-making entirely.
When working on art, I do as much as I can to minimize the amount of resources used. For instance, I do the usual- I turn off lights when sunlight will suffice, I unplug electronics not in use, I recycle what I can, etc... but admittedly, this can only go so far.
Creating fursuits and plushies often leaves behind a lot of scrap material: small pieces of minky, faux fur, upholstery foam, thread, etc. that is too small to use in other projects. One might see the mess and decide it's useless- best to throw it out. However, I've found that the scraps actually make for great stuffing! So I chop up my scraps into even smaller pieces, mix it together, and use it as stuffing in other projects. I estimate that I've saved at least ten pounds of scraps from the landfill by doing this. It's a small thing, but one I'm proud of, because it has made a difference.
I have also experimented with using organic faux fur to create fursuits. I ordered hemp fur from Devohome to test if it could replace synthetic faux fur in fursuits... I'm not sure about it. The texture is not nearly as soft, and the fur seems to become matted much more easily. There's still some work I must do with it before I reach my conclusion. But it doesn't seem promising. Hemp faux fur isn't widely produced. It had to be shipped from Ukraine to the United States. Such a long shipping distance is not very eco-friendly. Hemp fur also requires a lot of water to create. While it's still better than synthetic faux fur, it seems like hemp fur uses too many resources to be worth it right now, unfortunately.