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
Click here to see our Polish partners’ Woolume website (ubb.edu.pl)
News from the project
The way forward for WOOLUME
As the Woolume project comes to an end after three and a half fruitful years, a new project note has been published. Economics and scale are important themes, especially for moving forward with better use of local wool. As identified in other projects, things need to happen in the right order and there…
Woolume coming to its voluminous end
“Will I have to change my sheep?” was the first question Piotr Kohut had asked when the Center for Regional Produce in Koniaków was asked to be a partner in the Woolum bilateral project financed by Norway grants. The respect for keeping the sheep happy prevailed, and the project has amazing results, including…
Productive project publishes again
The scientific article Sound Absorption of Tufted Carpets Produced from Coarse Wool of Mountain Sheep has been published in Journal of Natural Fibers. The article is co-authored by Jan Broda, Katarzyna Kobiela-Mendrek, Marcin Bączek, Monika Rom and Ingvild Espelien, and is an important contribution to the study of wool’s properties. As part of…
Winter wheat + wool pellets work well
It turns out that Polish mountain sheep wool can be successfully used as a nitrogen-rich, organic fertilizer in organic farming. This enables utilization of coarse wool, which is not suitable for textile processing, to be used and lead to zero-waste from wool shearing. “Utilisation of waste wool from mountain sheep as fertiliser in…