Conventional wool
VS
recycled wool

We can find the most common wool from sheep, but we can also produce wool from many other animals, such as alpacas, Angora rabbits, camels, Cashmere and Angora goats…

Many breeds of sheep are also used, resulting in various types of wool fabrics, like Merino wool or Shetland wool. Some fabrics are even made from lambswool!

Since it is a fabric made from animal fibers, wool production comes with different ethical issues.

One of the most striking ones is that sheep often endure painful and inhumane practices, such as mulesing, tail docking and castration, generally done without pain relief when the lambs are only a few weeks old.

Tail docking, meaning cutting the sheep's tail, and mulesing are practiced to prevent flystrike, which happens when flies lay their eggs and burrow into the sheep's flesh. Banned in New Zealand but still practiced in other parts of the world, mulesing involves cutting skin from the lamb's buttock.

As you can imagine, such practices are very bloody and painful for the animal. Flystrike can actually be avoided without harming the sheep, yet mulesing and tail docking are still very common in the wool industry.

Workers in the wool industry are usually paid very poorly and by the volume. It means that they need to shear the animals as quickly as possible. This not only shows how stressful their working conditions are, but the extreme working rhythm contributes to the mistreatment of animals: they are often cut so deeply that they need to be stitched.

Not to mention the fact that animals are kept in increasingly cramped conditions, they are often sprayed with insecticides, which contain hazardous chemicals for the farmers and the sheep.

Another unethical issue is that, since sheep are usually bred to be born in the winter, millions of lambs die each year because of the cold, neglect and starvation.

All those harmful practices are common in the wool industry, making it a very unethical material.

Wool from sheep and alpacas as well as cashmere from goats are produced in supply chains which commodify and routinely, ultimately slaughter of sentient beings. With major emissions and biodiversity impacts, choosing alternatives to these animal fibres is a decision to protect life on earth.

Recycled wool combines the benefits of regular wool, but is more sustainable because:

• Recycled wool involves reusing old wool garments and turning them into new products.
• Doing so diverts used wool fabrics from the landfill, reducing land use. In addition, it minimizes the use of chemicals and doesn’t contribute as much to environmental pollution.
• Compared to virgin wool, producing one kilogram of recycled wool helps save 11 kg of CO2 and 500 liters of water.
• Recycling wool also does not cause any ethical issues because no animal is harmed or treated poorly in the process.

There are several certification labels you can look for if you want to make sure that you are purchasing recycled wool, the most famous one being the Global Recycled Standard.

And remember that buying second-hand wool is another way to “recycle” this fabric!