Is Lambswool Sustainable?

Or are they pulling the wool over our eyes?

It's the time of year when we see lambs in the fields when we're out on our school-holiday jaunts, and lambs feature in Easter imagery with Jesus called the Lamb of God in the Bible. Polish families make sugar lambs, and many of us will eat roast lamb on Easter Sunday. In the UK, especially in Yorkshire where many of you will be, we're unlikely to have a heatwave, so wearing our woollies is still a viable option over the Easter holidays. But is lambswool sustainable and ethical to wear? It's a complicated picture, and  the 'shear' size of the debate is beyond the length and scope of this one blog post.

What's the difference?

Taken from the animal’s first shearing at around 7  to 12 months of age, lambswool is finer and softer than the coarser wool from an adult sheep shorn annually. Lambswool with its delicate texture and elasticity is therefore used to create more luxurious knitwear items. 

Concerns around lambswool centre around:

• ethical concerns over animal welfare

• environmental concerns over soil degradation, desertification caused by overgrazing and the emission of greenhouse gases.

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Ethical Concerns

The main ethical concern is over lamb welfare. Those of you who’ve been to one of my Fashion Sustainability workshops may remember the word mulesing featured in our game of Call My Bluff. But what is this practice and is it avoidable? Some species of sheep have intentionally been bred with wrinkly skin to increase their woolly surface area, giving farmers more potential for profit. These skin types, however, are more prone to blowfly and resultant maggot infestation. To prevent or minimise flystrike, mulesing is carried out with skin around a lamb’s buttocks cut, resulting in smooth scar tissue which is less appealing to flies. The mulesing procedure is painful and stressful for the animals, and is banned in the UK, the EU and New Zealand but not in major sheep producer Australia. Other less inhumane practices are possible, such as crutching which involves shearing around the buttock area, and PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals) suggests the ethical way forward is to breed plainer, less wrinkly sheep to prevent the need for the practice.

Another welfare issue is a result of the link between the wool and the meat industries. In order to maximise farming profit, lambs have increasingly been bred to be born in the winter, so they can graze and fatten up ready to be slaughtered in the spring. This practice, however, increases the risk to lambs of exposure and even starvation. Some of this is exacerbated owing to selective breeds which produce twins and triplets, with these often smaller and weaker lambs unable to survive in harsher winter conditions.

But as an article by impactful.ninja explains, 'The sustainability of lambswool fabrics depends largely on sheep farming practices,' and these of course vary enormously with more ethical brands taking care with their supply chain and offering transparency to the consumer.  Leicestershire-based wool company Paul James argues that ‘England has set a gold standard for animal welfare, making British sheep farming one of the most ethical practices in the world. Our responsible farmers in Britain go above and beyond to ensure their livestock is well cared for.' Sustainable grazing, rotational pasturing and humane handling are cited as ways animal welfare can be prioritised.

Environmental Concerns

Risks in relation to global warming come from greenhouse gas emissions from grazing animals. Further environmental risk comes from land usage with its potential for overgrazing and even desertification resulting in loss of biodiversity, with grazing land usage in relation to fabric creation far outstripping crop-growing usage. Meanwhile, the manufacturing of lambswool fabric itself can be energy and water-intensive.

There are, however, counterarguments to the points raised:

Land usage: land usage may be greater than that needed for cotton growing, but land is likely to be used less intensively for animal grazing than crop growing. Moreover, grazing sheep can actually contribute towards healthy pastures and stimulate plant growth.

Energy usage: water usage is calculated to be significantly less than in the manufacturing of traditional cotton fabric and less waste occurs than in the production of resource-intense polluting synthetic fibres.

GHG emissions: greenhouse gas emissions are to some extent offset by vegetation growing on grazing land sequestering carbon, providing benefits to the soil and ecosystem.

The Role of the Consumer

In terms of sustainability, lambswool arguably plays a greater role once in the hands of consumers. 

Longevity

Softer and less coarse than sheep's wool, lambswool is less itchy. A comfortable fabric to wear, we're therefore more likely to get good cost-per-wear from woollen garments which are a good trend-proof wardrobe staple. Lambswool's properties of keeping us cool when warm and hot when cold make it a surprisingly good choice all year round.  The fact that it washes well, needs washing less frequently than synthetics, requires only low temperatures to launder it and is better air dried than tumble dried all increase the durability and longevity of our lambswool garments preventing the need for more frequent purchases. 

Natural 

One of the benefits of lambswool being a natural fabric is that it doesn't pollute the waterways like domestic washing of synthetic materials will. 

Wool can also be recycled. And as a natural material, lambswool is biodegradable. Compared to synthetics, wool biodegrades in two shakes of a lamb's tail even if it were to end up in landfill. 

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