Why wool?

So, why wool?

Sheep are domesticated animals for the goods they provide – milk, meat, skin and wool. Unlike for meat and skin, a sheep’s life doesn’t end in order to provide milk and wool.

Wool is a great renewable material with plenty of benefits – it’s completely biodegradable (if you leave it in nature it will decompose, unlike any manmade fabric that requires ages to degrade) and it’s 100% natural so no energy is used to make it (unlike synthetic fabric that are usually by-products of petroleum, meaning that manufacturing includes a lot of harmful emissions into air).

On the other hand, it’s a breathable fabric and a great insulator – it has the ability to react to changes in body temperature (keeps you warm in winter but cool in summer). Also, it will last for years (decades!).

Unlike using leather as a fabric, sheep wool is completely renewable – a sheep grown for its wool can produce wool its whole life.

We don’t deny that sheep and other cattle use land, food and water to be raised. Yet we are not discussing food industry here, but textiles (wool only, to be precise). And in comparison to other ’vegan’ fabrics that are popular nowadays, producing and using wool is way more sustainable and responsible behaviour then going for synthetic fibers, since every synthetic fabric (even the recycled one) uses loads of energy and emits cubic meters of pollutants into air and ground.

Even popular materials that are promoted as ’completely eco-friendly’ such as lyocell (tencell) use both trees (as a non-renewable source) and chemical processes to be created. Our opinion is that going ’back to basic’ materials like wool, cotton and linen should be much strongly promoted.

There is a question how ’ethical’ cattle farms are and how well animals are treated. We don’t know that, we can only have the mass-media information like everybody. Accidents happen like in every production process and some sheep probably get hurt or killed in the process, yet we don’t think it should lead the world into using synthetically made fabrics but only to raise awareness that every mass production has a lot of downsides, and bring attention to small communities that should be supported and encouraged to take part in global trade.