Keeping in mind that all UL equipment is created using toxic, non sustainable, industrially generated petrochemicals that are twisted into various fabrics like nylon, dyneema, and various other synthetics, and those are made in huge industrial plants that then source them to smaller companies. With the exception of down, which I assume comes from industrial down farms or whatever you call a goose raising operation.
So on the top level, you're talking heavy duty earth destroying industrial processes, all totally non-sustainable.
As Roger in the past has noted, to be clear, cotton is no better when you deal with agribusiness and industrial farming techniques, because of how and where it's now grown. Used to use slave labor, if you recall, now it's all machines etc.
So it's probably best to not think too much about the raw materials. That leaves the people who create the products, if I can, I'll pick US based ones that produce locally over corporate chains any day of the week or year.
For fuels, if you skip past the myths, alcohol is almost exclusively produced from agribusiness corn, which is this weird inedible strain of corn, which uses very close to the same amount of energy that it contains in the end ethanol product, mainly derived from natural gas, for fertilizer, insecticides, tractors, and so on, while the conversion plants create the heat as well usually with natural gas. So it's a tossup, directly consuming non replaceable natural gas or white coleman type fuel, or use indirectly consumed diesel, natural gas and topsoil strip mining to create 'green' alcohol, aka, ethanol. Wood alcohol is a different process, not up on those details. I pick the alcohol because it's just so pleasant to use out there, so silent. And you can make your own stove out of cans.
On the downside, using land to create fuel corn drops global corn supplies, and has ripple results, like some fairly recent riots in Mexico caused by dramatic price increases in corn. Also some small disturbances in the mid east you might have heard of were triggered at least in part by hikes in food, mainly grain, prices, hikes created again, at least in part, by mandates to switch to 'sustainable' fuels.
UL footwear is 100% disposable, no resoling going on here, and I believe it's almost all made in sweat shops, mostly in Asia. Probably best to look for 'ethical' elsewhere.
I worry more about my personal overall footprint than a few pounds of nylon, and that's what matters to the overall environment, your day to day life. Driving, for example, as a perfect example, uses roughly my total lifetime consumption of backpacking gear by weight of fuel consumed roughly every tankful. Quite a bit more, actually, but we'll call it a tankful to keep it simple. That helps put things into a better perspective I think. One car tire probably has the same or more weight of all my gear, both are made from petrochemicals. Cars themselves, and the roads they require, another huge impact, probably the biggest of all I'd guess.
Everything shipped from Asia comes in huge container ships, that burn exceedingly vile and dirty bunker fuel, so the global supply chains are hardly 'green' by any stretch of the imagination.
Personally, I want to support real people running real companies, local if I can, or at least local to the US via the internet, and when I look at most of my gear now, I'm happy to see that a big chunk of it is now local cottage type stuff. I can't solve the industrial problems, but I can support good people making good stuff in an ethical way, and that's cottage industry, unless they get lazy and start to outsource to asia, of course, then there's no real difference as far as I'm concerned, nor is there any particular reason to buy from them at that point.
The only 'green' product I've found so far is Sawyer Squeeze filter, it filters 40k times more than a set of aquamira, and 5000 times more than a katadyne hiker pump filter.
Titanium isn't too bad either, for pots and such, it should last a lifetime, so that's not terrible, so at least it's not disposable junk. I have zero idea of how it's mined, where or anything else, though.
So the only real place you can find ethics in my opinion is where you have individuals running companies directly, employing real people locally. Guys like Lawson, who tries to source everything here, for example, or the Enlightenment quilt guys, who have all production done by local sewers. I think tarptent does that too.
