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COVER STORY
CLOTHING FROM VEGAN WOOL FIBRES Dr.N.N. MAHAPATRA Business Head (Dyes) SHREE PUSHKAR CHEMICALS & FERTILISERS LTD.
Instead of wool, you can wear some of the many natural vegan fabrics that don’t involve punching and stomping on sheep. Recently, we’ve seen a surge of high-performing vegan fabrics that are the perfect combination of soft and sustainable.More and more clothing brands are opting for these materials that don’t support the cruelty of the wool industry. In recent years, designers and clothing manufacturers have partnered with biotech to begin offering more animal-free alternatives: synthetic spider silk, artificial duck and goose down, high-tech faux fur, and vegan leather derived from everything from pineapples to winemaking waste. But there is currently no alternative wool on the market.Wool is one of the oldest textiles in human history.Wool clothing dates back to 10,000 years ago and its use spanned across the ancient world—from Ancient Peru to Egypt to Siberia. Wool is a natural animal fiber, primarily the fleece of sheep, but we can also get wool from many other animals: goats (such as cashmere and mohair), alpacas, rabbits (Angora wool), and even camels. Traditionally, wool is a sustainable fibre in the sense that sheep are part of the natural carbon cycle, consuming the organic carbon stored in plants and converting it to wool. Fifty per cent of the weight of wool is pure organic carbon. While most fabrics that make up the world of sustainable fashion deserve a bit of scrutiny, wool not only calls into question its impact on the environment and labourers, but its impact on woolproducing animals. It’s durable, warm yet breathable, easy to dye, and absorbs water without feeling clammy. But the
OCTOBER 2021
Key Points • Wool is one of the oldest textiles in human history. • 50℅ of the weight of wool is pure organic carbon. • Colombian students found that there are 114 different vegetable fibers that are used in artisanal crafts. • Calotropis Gigantea & Calotropis Procera grow abundantly all over India. • Pod fibres are extremely soft and light in weight • Stem fibres are immensely strong and almost impossible to break with bare hands. • Milky sap is widely used in Ayurveda to cure numerous diseases nool” in Tamil means both a book and a thread. • Production of this vegan fabric is mostly done by hand process of obtaining the wool—factory farming and shearing sheep—can be inhumane. Animal rights organisation PETA has released videos of sheep shearers kicking, cutting, and throwing sheep as they attempt to shear as much wool as quickly as possible. Then an idea came: Can we make wool without using sheep at all? Yes. Textile scientists have come up with two brilliant ideas to make vegan wool. The first one is that’s what a group of Colombian students have done, devising a wool alternative made from hemp and coconut fibers treated with mushroom enzymes. Calling their product Woocoa, they hope it might make farming sheep for wool unnecessary. It isn’t widely commercial yet, but it’s an exciting development for the future. It is very interesting how hemp, coconut, and mushrooms wind up becoming wool. The students found that there are 114 different vegetable fibers that are used in artisanal crafts. Coconut fiber is an agricultural waste that could economically benefit communi-
ties on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, where hemp could be grown. 10As a clothing material, wool has a lot going for it. It’s durable, warm yet breathable, easy to dye, and absorbs water without feeling clammy. But the process of obtaining the wool—factory farming and shearing sheep—can be inhumane. Animal rights organisation PETA has released videos of sheep shearers kicking, cutting, and throwing sheep as they attempt to shear as much wool as quickly as possible. The students, from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, recently won a PETA-sponsored contest for the best “vegan wool,” or wool-like material made from non-animal fibers. So how did the mushrooms wind But while coconut fiber and hemp met the requirements for sustainability, they did not feel at all like wool. So the team began experimenting with making the fibres softer. Consulting professors from the biology, chemical engineering, and design departments of their university, they found they could use mushroom enzymes
