In Prato, Italy, some family businesses specialize in transforming used wool into new fabrics. Some may think that they’re owned by young entrepreneurs who care about the environment, but it’s been going on for a long time. In fact, it’s a tradition in the Tuscan City which dates back to the middle of the 19th century.
Mario Melani, one of the wool recycling business owners, who’s now 94, has spent more than six decades transforming used wool. Among the locals, wool recyclers are artisans called cenciaiolo, or ragman—which people like Melani take pride in. Indeed, these artisans can recognize a material’s composition just by touching it.
In Prato, the process of making new fabric from used wool involves some stages. First, the artisans manually strip garments and mechanically shred the scraps. Next, they blend those fibers by color to get the desired hue. Finally, a carding machine untangles and aligns the fibers in one direction, then the material is spun into yarn and undergoes quality tests before being woven on a loom into a textile.
Historically, the global recycling of wool has been driven by economic opportunity and necessity, such as during disruptions in the fleece trade.
But now, recycled wool has seen a resurgence in popularity due to environmental concerns. Today’s consumers demand more clothes made primarily of reused natural fibers instead of synthetic materials, many of which can be recycled only through expensive, complex processes that involve chemicals.
The market has grown exponentially that textile makers which recycle used wool can’t keep up with the interest.
Wool and its contribution in improving environmental footprint
From a perspective of offsetting the environmental impact of the global fashion industry, recycling discarded wool clothes doesn’t really help; wool accounts for only about 1% of global textile fiber production.
Nonetheless, experts say that recycled wool has a significantly lower carbon footprint than those of virgin wool and many other textiles.
According to a report by life-cycle inventory database provider Ecoinvent, a kilogram production of recycled wool may generate 0.62 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). The same amount of fleece sheared from a sheep creates 75.8kg of CO2e. In comparison, cotton and polyester generate 4.69kg of CO2e and 4.31kg of CO2e
What’s actually more concerning is the waste generated by the global fashion industry. Currently, the global fashion industry generates an estimated 10% of the world’s carbon emissions. The sector also produces 100 billion apparel items each year, or roughly 14 for every person on Earth, with tens of millions of garments tossed out every day to make way for new ones.
The impact of fast fashion and its overconsumption
Bigger and more developed countries, like China, the UK and US and even smaller ones which have been “encouraged” to consume more have resulted in a lot more waste—one kind that are not well-processed.
For example, in Ghana, there are about 15m items of secondhand clothing each week. The locals call these clothes obroni wawu or “dead white man’s clothes.” In 2021, Ghana imported $214m (£171m) of used clothes, making it the world’s biggest importer.
How does the country become the world’s biggest importer of used clothes? Well, usually, donated garments from big countries are sold to exporters and importers who then sell them to vendors in places such as Kantamanto in Accra, one of the world’s largest secondhand clothing markets.
With the rapid, constant rise of fast fashion, cheap clothes bought and cast aside as trends change. In the used clothes sector in Ghana, while the volume of clothing coming to the market has increased while the quality has gone down.
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In another section of the market, people work to repurpose items of clothing that would otherwise be discarded. T-shirts are cut up and sewn together with other bits of material to create skirts, knickers, tops and boxer shorts.
One of the exporters, John Opoku Agyemang, has sent the resulting garments to other African countries, including Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast. When Agyemang first started working at the market 24 years ago, he remembers being able to sell all the clothing that came in.
Now, when he opens a bale, there are about 70 items he can’t use. “For 12 years, the goods coming here have not been good, we can’t benefit from them. It’s my impression that countries abroad think Africa is very poor, so they give us low-quality goods and their waste,” Agyemang said.
A mountain of fast fashion waste
In Kantamanto Market, according to the Or Foundation, about 40% of the clothing is left as waste. Some of it is collected by waste management services, some is burned at the edges of the market, while the rest is dumped in informal landfills, like an area around two miles from the market.
Old Fadama, the name of the area, was once a vibrant and thriving community. But now, it looks like a scene from an apocalyptic fiction: it is now, per the Or Foundation, the largest unsanctioned dump for clothing waste leaving Kantamanto.
On huge piles of clothes and plastic, animals graze here; birds circle overhead while flies swarm close to the ground. This area is home to at least 80,000 people. Many of those have migrated from northern Ghana, where farming has been mostly unsuccessful. Their houses are built on layers of rubbish.
There’s a body of water nearby called Korle Lagoon. Despite its beautiful-sounding name, its waters are black and filled with excrement; litter lines the shores.
Of course, it wasn’t always like this—Korle Lagoon was a beautiful place once. Just around a decade or two ago, swimming in the lagoon and playing on its shores were possible. People used to fish there, and there were people depending on the lagoon for their livelihood. But now, it’s like a death pit.
One might think that if we have more materials that are recyclable like wool, with a change of mindset in fashion, cases like in Ghana can improve. But experts don’t think wool is the ultimate answer to this problem.
Wool is not a panacea
Now, one thing to keep in mind is that humanity and the things that revolve around it, especially when we’re talking about the environment, are complex.
The impacts of processes and supply chains aren’t always comparable, and recyclability is just one element to consider when assessing sustainability. Therefore, identifying which materials are best for the environment isn’t straightforward.
While wool can be recycled mechanically and won’t shed microplastics, more than 1 billion sheep involved in its production globally produce burps containing methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
In an email, Del Hudson, executive vice president of market impact for Worldly Holdings Inc. said, “It’s not apples to apples.”
According to Worldly Holdings Inc., a technology platform that aggregates materials data for businesses to better understand the impacts of supply chains, sustainability claims should be treated with caution as they can fail to reflect real-world impacts that aren’t binary.
Moreover, although recycling textiles tends to have a lower environmental burden than producing new materials, the mechanical process for reconstituting wool results in a shorter fiber length than virgin fleece. Therefore, we can’t recycle the material indefinitely.
But can wool be a clothing material we need in the future?
Although wool is not perfect in spite of its recyclability, we can always emulate the wool recyclers’ approach offers a circular economy model. And if there is more demand for wool, as more people become aware of its beneficial features for the environment, then I believe we’re heading in a better direction.
So, in terms of being a key clothing material in the future, maybe yes, in terms of setting a good textile material example due to its recyclability and circular economy. However, there are still some issues around wool, like where they’re from and how we can’t recycle it forever.
Ultimately, I also personally think that as long as us humans don’t limit our clothing consumption, then the textile waste problem will persist, regardless how we’ll find new sustainable materials.
Sources
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-wool-recycling-tradition-and-fast-fashion-waste/?srnd=green
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