Recycled Wool

Wool is a material with manifold benefits: it is extremely durable, has heat regulating properties, and rarely looks worse for wear. It’s also biodegradable, provided that it’s 100% wool.

As a Scandinavian brand, it is also very much a part of our heritage. Additionally, as a clothing brand dedicated to changing the industry norm, reusing resources is a form of practicing what we preach. We use both post- and pre-consumer waste to make our knitted sweaters and woven coats. The post-consumer wool is waste from old textiles, which can be wool mixed with other synthetics, that is sorted by colors, shredded, and re-spun into a new yarn. The pre-consumer wool is 100% wool fabric waste from factory floors, that is then shredded, re-spun,and mixed with other recycled synthetics to guarantee a longer and therefore stronger fiber. Either way, this is waste that would otherwise be discarded.

The wool we use is thus recycled wool mixed with other fibers, and the difference between new wool and recycled wool is that recycled wool is made from textile scraps and old wool garments, while new wool is exactly what it sounds like - wool directly from the animals. The textile waste used for recycled wool often consists of a mix of fibers, therefore we , have to test the fabric to know the exact mix which is the reason it says “10% other materials” on the care label.

Advantages of recycled wool
By working with already existing textiles, we skip several farming and manufacturing stages. That reduces the final product’s carbon footprint, compared to a conventional virgin wool garment. The same applies to wool's self-cleaning properties, which means that wool garments need to be washed less often. Worth mentioning is that wool is not just a fine fiber we humans take from animals for our comfort; animals have to be trimmed for their health, so we're reusing something natural that's already available. The big problems arise when this transitions to an industrial scale where the welfare of the animals comes last.

Not a perfect solution, but a good alternative
Whilst recycled wool has many advantages, we also acknowledge that mixing wool with other synthetic fibers isn’t a perfect solution. We chose to work with recycled wool because we want to avoid virgin animal fibers. Working with farms requires a lot of on-site control to ensure animal welfare, which is hard to do for a brand our size.

When we chose to work with recycled wool, we knew that the recycled fibers, being shorter, needed to be combined with stronger ones to maintain their durability merits. All the synthetic fibers mixed with the wool are also pre- or post-consumer recycled fibers and we continuously try to source fabrics with the highest possible share of wool in their mix. This isn’t a perfect solution, but to make durable, warm winter sweaters, this seems to be the best alternative for us.

Read more about recycled wool here.