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
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…
Double whammy for Clothing Research
Two articles from Clothing Research at Consumption Research Norway have been accepted by the journal Fibers and are accessible online. The two articles are entitled Reducing plastic: Opportunities and obstacles for coarser wool in consumer goods and Natural and sustainable? Consumers’ textile fiber preferences. More than half of the team in the Clothing…
Reducing Plastic in Consumer Goods: Opportunities for Coarser Wool
Lisbeth Løvbak Berg, Ingun Grimstad Klepp, Anna Schytte Sigaard, Jan Broda, Monika Rom and Katarzyna Kobiela-Mendrek. Abstract Production and use of plastic products have drastically increased during the past decades and their environmental impacts are increasingly spotlighted. At the same time, coarse wool, a by-product of meat and dairy production, goes largely unexploited…
Continue Reading Reducing Plastic in Consumer Goods: Opportunities for Coarser Wool
Natural and Sustainable? Consumers’ Textile Fiber Preferences
by Anna Schytte Sigaard and Kirsi Laitala Abstract Textile fibers have become a major issue in the debate on sustainable fashion and clothing consumption. While consumers are encouraged to choose more sustainable and circular textile materials, studies have indicated that a reduction in production and consumption has the greatest potential to reduce the total environmental impact.…
Continue Reading Natural and Sustainable? Consumers’ Textile Fiber Preferences