Wool sourcing: creativity asks for a rougher touch but in a profit driven economy, transparency is required now more than ever

we keep looking to the past for answers about our present when we should be looking to the future a reflection on global wool sourcing and the goal to reach workforce and environmental respect

The crisis began in the Nineties. The hardest blow was the closure of the historic wool mill Lanificio di Gandino, in Bergamo. Shepherds throughout northern Italy no longer knew where to take their wool. Wool that remains raw no longer has value and is not collected by anyone unless it is intended for washing. It accumulates and after a few months it becomes ‘special waste’, with its disposal involving considerable costs.

Wool is a natural and durable fiber produced by sheep all over the world, known for its thermal properties. Despite these characteristics, the percentage of its use in the production of clothing is minimal, and in decline. Wool has been used since the times of the ancient Greeks and Romans, who seem to have continued a tradition and practice older than themselves and widespread among the populations of the East, North and West. Since the eighteenth century, it has been replaced, in some uses, by cotton, and today, it shares most of the world market with this fiber. Like the cotton trade, the wool trade is regulated by a series of institutions, markets, customs, classifications and contracts that vary from country to country in production and consumption.

Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, raw wool was supplied by the sheep farms of Spain, England and Germany. With the industrial progress of technology and the expansion of facilities, increasing quantities were also obtained from large flocks introduced in transoceanic countries. It is estimated that, starting from the second half of the last century, production – due to the expansion of breeding facilities, the improvement of breeds and better per unit yield – has almost doubled. From 1909-1913, it was at 14,289,000 quintals. It declined during the war and was reduced to 11,828,000 quintals in 1921, only to rise again and reach 17,265,000 quintals in 1932. The greatest increases in production were recorded in Australia, South Africa, the United States and Argentina; overall there were declines in Europe, in particular in Russia. Depending on its origin, treatment and use, raw wool is classified into major categories, which are necessary for international trade.

In this way it is possible to distinguish between wools: merino and crossbred; madricine and lambskins; fat, salted, scraped, thoroughly washed; sheared and tanned; first and second shearing. Other minor distinctions are: combing and carding; industrial and store; chain, half chain and weft.

Merino wools come from the special merino breed – a breed originally from Spain. They are the finest wools, those with the smallest fiber coarseness, and are used in the textile industry. Crossbred wools come from merino crossed with other more common breeds, or other crosses. These are less fine and are used, in most common cases, to fill mattresses. In England, a distinction is made between crossbred wools, suitable for industry, and those for carpets or mattresses. It is estimated that merino accounts for about forty percent of world production, crossbred wools thirty-five percent and carpet wools twenty-five percent. However, the trend varies from country to country. South Africa produces exclusively merino wool, Australia about eighty-four percent merino wool and sixteen percent crossbred and New Zealand almost exclusively crossbred wool. The wool industry produces about 1.16 billion kilograms of clean wool per year, from a global flock of more than one billion sheep. Each sheep produces enough to make ten meters of fabric, the equivalent of about six sweaters. In total, enough wool is produced annualy to make about one sweater per year, per person on the planet. These figures include wool used for items other than clothing – such as furniture or carpets. Despite the large amount of fiber produced, wool represents a small percentage of global textile consumption. In clothing production, only about one percent of the fabrics used are wool or wool-based. The main wool producers are China, Australia and New Zealand. Australia is the largest exporter of wool, while the largest importer is China. The United Kingdom, Iran, Russia and South Africa also produce significant amounts of wool. Global production is valued at approximately 7.6 billion dollars per year.

Today, wool is no longer considered a resource, but a ‘special waste’ to be disposed of at a high price. It is a material that does not burn and does not deteriorate so it must be used. Sheep must be sheared at least once a year, to prevent suffering. If, at one point in time, the wool supply chain was crucial to Italian regions, today it has been abandoned. The problem is quantity: in Italy we are talking about minimal quantities of wool, with difficulties in finding people willing to work in these supply chains. For big companies, used to importing wool from abroad, Italian quantities are sample quantities, with a fallout – in terms of costs – that is, as a consequence, very high. In most cases, large

producers do not care if the wool is purebred wool from native animals, a rarity in Italy. Wool is considered a mere commodity. What counts are the technical standards, to be respected regardless of origin.

Wool production in Italy lacks the superior fineness of selected merino breeds that inhabit the endless plains of Australia and the Cape Colony. In many breeds, characteristics derived from the infusion of merino blood can still be found, but the production of wools clearly traceable to the merino type is scarce, with almost all production belonging to crossbred types, prevalently fine and medium wools. Of the 90,000-100,000 quintals of washed wool obtained from national production, about 20,000 are suitable only for mattresses: all the wool from Sardinia, part of that from Sicily, Piedmont and Lombardy, and the wool from Lecce and Altamura.

A sheep produces about 1.5 kilos of wool per year, but only seventy percent is recovered for processing. Farmers are paid between twenty and fifty cents per kilo, an insignificant price, which increases more than sixtyfold during processing. It suffices to think that a cloth of 1 by 1.5 meters, obtained from about 800 grams of treated wool – which is equal to 1.5 kilos of dirty, freshly sheared wool – can cost fifty euros per meter. The costs increase in the case of the packaged product. Sheep shearing usually takes place after the cold season and therefore varies from country to country. In countries of large-scale production, it is done with the help of mechanical shearing machines. In Italy, shearing is usually done by specialized personnel who pass from one flock to another. The yield varies according to age, breed and vintage. The preparation for sale includes grading (the operation of dividing fleeces, or their parts, into batches), packing and pressing the wool into bags, weighing and marking. Grading is different from sorting, which is done at the factory and involves different parts of the fleece, and has a direct and immediate relationship with the industrial use of wool.

Sorting is done at the farm or in the shearing station, and is used to separate more or less valuable products or parts; fine wool from medium and ordinary wool; white wool from yellowish wool and so on. Sorting has no precise rules. In Australia and South Africa, it is carried out with great care by specialized personnel, while in South America and other countries, it is rather neglected. Seventy-five percent of the international trade of raw wool, estimated at about nine million quintals, and fifty percent of wool production, is fed by the production of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa and supplies the industries of Europe, Japan and the United States. Among the European countries, England is not only the largest consumer market, but also, through the auctions in London and Liverpool, the largest center of intermediation: also exporting part of the wool it produces. France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Czechoslovakia and Poland are also strong importers. France and Belgium have numerous washing plants and import large quantities of greasy wool to be re-exported after being washed. Italy consumes all of its imports and exports only a portion of its production. Outside of Europe, Japan has increased its imports in the last decade and it is almost exclusively supplied by Australia.

Shearing can be a respectful and cruelty-free process if done right. While wild sheep naturally shear their thick wool coats in the spring, domesticated sheep have been bred to have an unnaturally thick coat that never stops growing. For these sheep, shearing is critical: it allows them to better regulate body temperature, prevents parasites and infections, and can give them more mobility by preventing overgrowth. The reality of the wool industry is more alarming than just shearing. Profit is the main reason – shearers are usually paid by the volume of wool they produce, not the number of hours they work. The result is a process that emphasizes speed, very often at the expense of the animal. Muleing, the practice of skinning the flesh of a sheep’s hindquarters without anesthesia, to combat flies, is one example, but it goes beyond sanctioned practices: general violence is also common. Multiple investigations by PETA (most notably those in 2014 and 2018) have uncovered footage of widespread animal abuse, including kicking, beating and punching, blunt force trauma, and open wounds to the skin, ears, and genitals. This does not mean that all shearers treat their animals this way: no doubt many are caring and attentive. The commodification of an animal inevitably shifts a person’s focus from ‘I care about the life of the animal’ to ‘I care about the paycheck’, a perspective that is steeped in the animal’s final fate, of being slaughtered for meat at the end of its life cycle (as is usually the case with sheep). This objectivist mentality is the underlying problem with all animal industries, and the reason why violence emerges in practices like shearing that, in theory, should be harmless.

Pasture expansion raises environmental issues, including deforestation and habitat degradation of native species. A 2013 study titled Globalization of the Cashmere Market and the Decline of Large Mammals in Central Asia, published in the scientific journal Conservation Biology, showed that pasture expansion for goats used in the cashmere industry was the main driver of declining wildlife populations in Central Asia. Many of these animals native to China’s Tibetan Plateau, Mongolia, and India were already endangered. Combining these issues, as with all livestock industries the wool industry leaves behind a significant carbon footprint. According to a 2017 study on the relative environmental impact of a wide variety of materials used in the fashion industry, wool was one of the worst performing fibers (ranking fifth after leather, silk, cotton, and stick) due to significant greenhouse gas emissions caused by sheep. Perhaps there was a time when using animals to create textiles was the best and only option. The next step could be to embrace the looming commercialization of lab-grown biotextiles – but this is a whole other topic. For an industry, using millions of hectares of land around the world, producing toxic waste and carbon emissions, and causing suffering to billions of living creatures, doesn’t the alternative sound more appealing?