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.