We are reminded in our daily lives about climate change created in the
main through over-consumption, emissions and non-biodegradable waste. Unequivocally
caused by human modern day activities. The UN recently issued a red alert for climate change,
no one is exempt from it and we all need to start making changes from the current path,
living with nature and restoring the balance,
not destroying it. Maybe by taking a step back before we move forward we can find a solution
Why Wool Matters. We've been cultivating land and domesticating animals, including sheep,
since around 9000 BC when wool provided us with our first woven clothing. There's evidence and
records of knotted rug furnishings and rudimentary garments dating back to around 5000 BC in
Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates. In 1907 the first plastic was invented and in
1935 Nylon was introduced by DuPont in Wilmington Delaware USA. By a miracle of modern science such
commonplace things as coal, water and air have been transformed into threads more elastic than
silk. Stockings of a fine silky cloth made by the science of chemistry from a lump of coal. Although
mostly for economic and practical reasons plastic, which is currently overwhelming the planet,
was originally created as a solution to maintain the availability of natural resources on earth.
How wrong that's proved to be with plastic's devastating effect on marine life first observed
in the late 1970s to the shock and surprise of many including the Prince of Wales. There are 55
million of us on this island using non-returnable bottles and indestructible plastic containers.
It is not difficult to imagine the mountains of refuse that we shall have to deal with somehow.
In a world in which 69 per cent of all global fibre production
is made from synthetic oil-based materials which will remain in landfill for generations to come.
So why do we undervalue wool? It is natural, biodegradable and renewable,
one of nature's best performing and most ecological fibres. Wool is currently 1 percent
of the global fibre market. There are estimated to be 1.229 billion sheep on planet earth providing
1937 million kilograms of wool per year which is manufactured into a wealth of different products.
Then why do we overlook this extraordinary fibre? One which grows and renews on the backs of sheep,
inhabiting the uplands and moorlands of Britain, the outback of Australia, the mountains and plains
of New Zealand and the veldt and kopjes grasslands of South Africa it seems we've almost forgotten
the importance of wool, and many are currently blind to its unique properties. It really is
of the greatest importance that we educate and inform the next generation of makers and consumers
of the global benefits of using natural and sustainable resources, including wool,
which as a longevity fiber is then followed by its natural return to the soil. For me it was
the strangest thing that you could, you could, buy your plastic t-shirt and then you had your Merino
clothing which was the top layer. But when you cut yourself it was only plastic and I couldn't
figure it out. So I spent the journey deciding why on earth are we not using Merino wool a fibre
that literally grows in the mountains behind me. We designed WoolAid, which is the world's first
Merino wool adhesive bandage, so once you're finished with your WoolAid you peel it off,
you bury it in the ground and it will release nitrogen, phosphorus all of these wonderful
fertilizers for your vegetable garden and back for the soil. The biggest challenge of our time
is most certainly the climate crisis, it is in fact the biggest challenge in recorded history.
I'm Geoff Ross, myself and my family are the owners of Lake Hawea Station.
We are six and a half thousand hectares and we run close to ten thousand fine wool
Merino and around 200 Angus cattle. Farming today, you need a massive broad skill set
we've always in farming had to be mechanics, stockman, vets, accountants, agronomists but
now more than ever you actually also have to be an environmentalist. We knew we wanted to
improve the environmental credentials here and we wanted to be part of, you know, some way in
healing the planet but we didn't quite know how. My son quite early on started talking about carbon
and sure i understood that the world needs to lower its carbon footprint the world is going to
need to decarbonize, but i didn't really know how we could have a role in that here on the station.
We make two and a half thousand tons of greenhouse gas every year from this property which sounds
like a big number, but then we did a lot of work on our sequestration through our vegetation,
our re-vegetation, through trees that we're planting, we planted over 15 000,
we came up with our sequestration number, and we're sequestering well over 5000 tons so that
makes us carbon positive. Farming is viewed as somewhat of a problem in the climate crisis right
now. I think a common myth in farming, is that farming is at the expense of the environment.
We came here with a real interest in improving environmental values, and so that's allowed us to
open source and share this information, and get an exchange going with a whole lot of farmers,
because farming and the environment can actually be built constructively together.
We are a farm that's actually helping to suck carbon out of the atmosphere.
There is a lot of discussion about how we sequester carbon in soil and that it is all
about vegetation taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and putting it into the soil as organic matter,
and if the soil is undisturbed that organic matter can stay in the soil for long periods of time,
preventing it from going back into the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas. In regenerative agriculture
there's discussion about the potential to use livestock as a way to manage the vegetation,
so in a rotation over several years you can imagine a field that some years will be
left in grass, and think of that grass during the peak of the growing season, livestock,
cattle or sheep moving through that field just eating small amounts of that vegetation,
but not eating it to the ground, not leaving bare earth but moving them on relatively quickly so
that you're always keeping that vegetation just about at its peak growing capacity.
That means it is photosynthesizing and building biomass as fast as it can, and at the same time it
is at that peak growth rate that's pushing carbon into the soil. Groote Post is home to about 1000
dual purpose Merino sheep and they very much help to maintain the biodiversity of this farm
as they graze dry land and especially the stubble land after the harvest. As they graze
that land they put nutrients back into the soil and increase the biodiversity of the farm.
Farmers from the Cape to Cairo depend on sheep for their livelihoods, and it's estimated that
300 million of the poorest families depend on the livestock and small ruminant industry
for their daily income. These animals have adapted to survive very arid and
dry conditions which make them suitable for Africa
and it's really a very important part of the income of the people living here
I think wool is such a wonderful, versatile, sustainable and clean green fibre.
I see that we are custodians of this property, we want to see our native flora and fauna thrive and
I think for the whole biodiversity of this property it is important to look after that
native land, so we want to leave this property in even better order for the next generation.
So in all of our farming systems we've done a huge amount to help the environment over the last
couple of decades, we've planted 25 000 trees, put in miles of hedges and all the time thinking
about this regenerative, sustainable agriculture where one enterprise on the farm is helping and
feeding another. We're farming some four and a half thousand acres here in Gloucestershire
and we do it all 100 per cent organically. So what we've got is a regenerative agriculture type
system, we're hearing a huge amount about modern farming practices and the emissions of methane
into the atmosphere which is of course damaging our planet. What we need to think about is how
our meat is reared, the big difference between us as humans and sheep and cattle is that we're
mono-gastrics we have one digestive system one stomach, cattle, sheep any animal that chews cud
is a ruminant it has four stomachs and it, through evolution, learnt to walk around the face of the
planet eating vegetation. If we breed animals that require huge amounts of protein to be fed
to them to be able to perform and produce vast amounts of meat then of course that's going to
add to the noxious gases that it's producing, putting it out into the atmosphere. If you breed
an animal that performs well from the grass under its feet and it converts that energy beautifully
and slowly into fine quality meat the emissions produced are far far less and the sequestering
of carbon in the turf that they're standing on means that you can get to a carbon neutral point.
Sheep, being ruminants, produce more methane than non-ruminant animals and this is because of the
microorganisms in their foregut, the rumen and reticulum. These microorganisms are what enable
sheep to survive on marginal land and high fibre, low quality feeds these microorganisms enable
them to digest and utilize the fibre within plants and a by-product of this fermentation
process is methane and there's no getting away from the fact that ruminants produce methane,
however what we can do to address this issue with methane and its contribution to global warming
is to improve the production efficiency of animals because if if the sheep we produce
are more efficient then methane intensity decreases, in other words we get less
methane per unit of product produced and there are many things that can be done to
reduce methane intensity most of which relate to the way in which we manage our animals. My name is
Dr Henry Greathead, I’m a lecturer in the School of Biology, part of the faculty of
Biological Sciences here at the University of Leeds, I'm a ruminant nutritionist.
Management can go a long way to helping reduce methane emissions most of this
is achieved through nutrition, so the more fibrous the diet the more methane that is generated. So by
pasture improvement we get a reduction of methane emissions and likewise there are numerous products
being explored through research, and are currently available on the market, that can be added to the
diets of ruminant animals, sheep being one of them, which can shift the fermentation
pathways within the animal as well as inhibiting enzymes associated with the production of methane
which contribute to reducing methane. There will always be some methane produced,
but we are not relying on fossil fuels in the production of wool or meat from the sheep thus
its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is fairly minimal.
This is a huge industry, with global demand for natural and man-made textile fibres
set to expand by 84 per cent between 2010 and 2030 and, according to the Ellen MacArthur foundation,
textiles production is responsible for something like 1.2 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions
annually, that's more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined.
it is abundantly clear to me that we need to make changes to the way we think about the production,
use and the disposal of clothing and textiles. If we are going to get anywhere near to meeting the
United Nations climate change goals set for for the industry a major part of that change has to be
moving from a linear system to a to a circular one.
Wool matters for me when it is grown organically and the animal welfare is a priority, and as a
designer it makes incredibly beautiful garments that can end up in your forever wardrobe and
stand the test of time. At Mother of Pearl we have worked super hard on our supply chains, and from
start to finish, and now we are moving into the world of circularity. We have launched rental and
resale, and we are going to be working super hard on the resale and repair elements in the future.
Is there anywhere more bleak, more noxious or more eerie than a landfill site. This
is where the detritus of our civilization ends up, millions of tons of it every year,
after a while they become disguised, hidden from sight, giant dustbins in the earth with
a covering of soil. But underneath it's all still there, the synthetic shirts, skirts,
hoodies and jumpers, the plastic raincoats and polypropylene carpets. No one knows how
long they will linger in landfill, perhaps hundreds maybe even thousands of years.
With his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales as its Patron, the Campaign for Wool looks at
the environmental impact of what we wear and what happens when clothes go into landfill.
To prove that wool biodegrades and plastic doesn't he simply buried two jumpers,
I'm back here four months later to dig them up and see what's happened.
Does wool really return to nature that quickly? I think we’ve found treasure
So here is the woolly one, you can see it's just returning to the earth,
decomposing naturally. That will feed the roses. For this one, it's going nowhere.
No, it's a plastic bag and that's quite scary. Plastics and synthetic fibres need industrial
processing to recycle them, and they end up in our landfill sites without biodegrading.
The micro particles that shed off of our garments into our wash are clogging up our oceans and
causing huge problems for our environment. In this short film we've taken a look at some of
the steps being taken by farmers and manufacturers to confirm wool as a 21st Century biodegradable,
carbon neutral and natural fibre. In the grand scheme of things especially considering sheep are
largely produced extensively off grassland which is sequestering carbon,
this methane produced is part of a cycle, a natural cycle. If we take care of soil
it helps take greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and helps us to prevent the damage
from climate change. No one is exempt from acting to climate change, not countries, not companies,
not individuals. Farming is not the problem in the climate crisis, farming is actually a solution
to the climate crisis. Only wool provides the ultimate reassurance of sustainability.