As quite a few of you know, at Chester Wool, we spend a lot of time and consideration about where our materials are sourced and how biodegradable they are. We try to consider the balance between the necessities of nylon in garments like socks as it promotes longevity, and design yarns that may work as alternatives (see the previous blog post on the Eco sock yarns) but we also like to look beyond things like this and look at the overall picture of the entire life length of all of our products, and what happens to them at the end of their lives.
Jen is an avid composter, and quite often composts waste yarn to add nitrogen into the soil, including super- wash wools. Which has in the past raised a few eyebrows! People mistakenly think that super-wash wool is coated in plastic, but not all polymer coatings are not all equal, we don’t like the word ‘coatings’ as gives us the impression that the yarn is literally coated in a polymer, this isn’t the case, it’s micro dots which make up a very small percentage of the wool. You will find plenty of information on our super-wash wool in out FAQ section where we discuss this in more detail, but to summarise, we have been following the research in biodegradeability of Non- superwash wool and Superwash wool for a long time, and have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to discuss this with researchers in person.
We have previously linked before to studies that have shown that non-superwash wool and superwash wool degrade in marine environments very quickly and the thinking was that all the particles break down very effectively into their component parts without leaving any nasties in the sea. A new study has been published again confirming this, which is great news!! You can read it here. This is worth a read because there is a lot of misinformation about superwash however as discussed below some processes are better than others.
Yes, there is additional processing for superwash wool compared to non-superwash, but then again, there are longevity advantages to using it VS non-superwash, and we believe that accessibility issues are also very important, not everyone has the ability or resources to hand wash every item of clothing. I’d much prefer people to use super wash wools and get a life time out of a sweater, than either choose to not knit one in the first place because its a faff to care for it, or use a synthetic fibre that will not break down for hundreds of years and cause pollution. Wool after all is a natural resource and takes a great deal of effort to grow and create.
Please remember that not all super wash wools are the same, we know that these studies pertain to the type we use, but this may not be the case for all of them, so it may not extrapolate, its also worth remembering that we superwash treat our fibres in Europe so we know its done correctly and to a very high standard, this is not the same all over the world.
To sum up, it’s great to know that we can feel comfortable using super wash wools for our dyeing knowing that it will not end up as microfibres in marine environments.. and that if you really want to you can stick it in your compost like Jen does!