WOOLUME
Polish sheep wool for improved resource utilisation and value creation
The main objective of Woolume is to explore how an under-utilized natural resource – wool from remote mountain regions – can be maximized into materials in local sustainable industry innovation systems that offer high returns on investment and contribute to an optimized, next-generation circular economy.
Mapping, understanding and further developing products from the biomass for interior sound-absorption/acoustic properties and for soil enhancement will be at opposite ends of the research scope – ensuring innovation, impact, resource and fibre-property utilisation.
The project team is composed of research, education and business experts on wool, fibre-properties, resource maximizing, value-chains, value-creation, dissemination and certainly knowledge-transfer. Alongside the practical and environmental work with the wool, a theoretical approach will aim to change the discourse on how resource utilisation leverages a more sustainable future.
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are at the core of the project. Through better understanding how the wool from the Polish Beskid mountains can, through grazing, optimise value-enhancement and dissemination of results and environmental consequences, Woolume aims to “up the volume” for best practices to enhance biodiversity and carbon sequestering, alongside economic gain, in a low-income agricultural region.
Participants
- Ingrun Grimstad Klepp
- Kirsi Laitala
- Anna Schytte Sigaard
- Vilde Haugrønning
- Lisbeth Løvbak Berg
- Tone Skårdal Tobiasson, nicefashion.org
- Jan Broda, Akademia Techniczno-Humanistyczna w Bielsku-Bialej

News from the project
Local as a fashion change-maker
Hybrid event, 8th June 2022, 17:30-19:30 CET Online and at Sentralen, Oslo
New book on local and sustainable clothes
Explores the importance of local practices in achieving global sustainability. This is a book about one fibre, wool, its role in the future of a more sustainable global textile industry, and a new approach to how we can organize how we use local resources in a better way. Why is this important? Because…
Woolume: Potential new products from vacant wool
Anna Schytte Sigaard, Lisbeth Løvbak Berg and Ingun Grimstad Klepp Summary This report gives an overview of the market for alternative wool products with the perceived potential to be made using vacant wool. The work is based on a desktop study and interviews with manufacturers and distributors, focusing on products made of wool…
Continue Reading Woolume: Potential new products from vacant wool
Responsible Fashion: How do we make our ideas a reality?
Online Symposium hosted by Instituto Maragoni, London. 24th November 2021, 9:30am – 4:30pm GMT
Continue Reading Responsible Fashion: How do we make our ideas a reality?