Proof That Wool is an Environmental Hazard

Jun 01, 2020

"To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. The more helpless the creature, the more that it is entitled to protection by man from the cruelty of man."
-Mahatma Gandhi

Definitions

Wool: The hair of a sheep, sheared and used for human products.

Environmental hazard: An event or substance, naturally-occurring or man-made, with the potential to harm the surrounding environment and/or public health. Common examples are natural disasters (naturally-occurring) and chemical spills (man-made).

How It's Made

Wool, like dairy and eggs, is portrayed to the public as harmless, that the sheep are gently sheared every so often, then continue on living bucolically in a beautiful green pasture on a "family farm." But even on the most serene, "humane" farm, that is far from true. The image we have in our heads of wool was created through marketing, through an appeal to traditional values of supporting small farms that "do things right."

Slaughter

It may seem silly to have a definition of wool above, but that was to aid in illustrating a bigger picture. Raising sheep for wool is like raising humans for hair. Our first question should be, Why on earth are we raising millions of sheep of year just to cut their hair? Then, What happens to the rest of their bodies when they aren't producing wool, and what about when they get old? The answer to the first question is actually pretty simple: sheep aren't just raised for wool. Similar to the dairy industry, the wool industry milks the animals for all they're worth. Instead of viewing the wool industry as a separate entity from the meat industry, we should look at them as symbiotic partners, feeding off of and supporting each other.

As in every other animal-based industry, sheep are slaughtered when they are no longer profitable, generally when they become sick or old or can no longer produce enough wool to be economically beneficial to keep around. And let's be clear: this is not the "humane euthanasia" schtick the industry wants you to believe is happening. They are sent to a slaughterhouse, just like the six-week-old chickens and dairy-born veal calves and withered breeding sows, and they are butchered.[1] Of course, their flesh isn't as bright and juicy as the babies' that humans prefer to eat, so sheep meat is often stuffed into less-desirable products and pet food, or fed back to farmed animals.

Mutilations

But what happens before that? Surely, they must live pretty comfortable lives and only suffer the "one bad day." Unfortunately, that's not the case. For one, sheep have been selectively bred to have wrinkly skin, similar to Shar-Peis, thereby growing more hair on a larger surface area. The big problem with this is that the sheeps' bodies remain the same size, so they are often suffocated under the weight of their own wool. If you've ever had long hair and worn it in a ponytail too long, subsequently getting a headache from the weight of the hair pulling on your scalp, imagine feeling that all over your body. In conjunction, because most sheep aren't living idyllically on small farms and are stuffed into factory farms, when they're sheared, it's often briskly and haphazardly. (Not to mention that workers are paid for the volume of wool they shear, so their goal is to cut as close to the skin as possible and do it as fast as possible.) As their skin is so wrinkly and their hair is so massive, sheep are often cut, sliced, and gouged in attempts to get every last piece of wool off their bodies, often leading to infections and death.[1, 2]

But wait -- there's more! Because farmed animals are viewed as property under the law, with no more rights than the shears with which they're shorn, they undergo certain mutilations standard in all animal agriculture practices. This includes, but is not limited to: having identification tags punched through their ears; mulesing, a procedure in which their rump flesh is cut off to prevent infection (though the bloody wounds can themselves lead to infection); chopping their tails off; and castrating baby boys. All of these procedures are performed without anesthetic.[1, 2]

Environmental Impact

So, now that we know the ethical implications of using wool, let's get into the heart of this discussion: the environment. Like cows, sheep are ruminants, meaning that one of the gases they expel is methane, which is 25-100 times more destructive than CO2 and has 86 times the global warming potential.[3] But if we look at the Environmental Working Group's "'cradle to grave' life cycle assessments," lamb is the greatest contributor to CO2 emissions in the United States and Europe.[4] With several million lambs and sheep slaughtered for meat each year, outnumbering cows, in addition to the countless casualties as a result of filthy living conditions and disease, it's clear that farming ruminants is one of the greatest environmental threats we face today.[5, 6]

Though these statistics are about lamb production for meat -- because we're still at a point where people aren't considering the environmental impact of using animals for textiles -- sheep used for wool are still sheep, and they often live longer than lambs. This means that when they're not being sheared they're sitting around, often cramped together on factory farms as their wool grows, consuming tremendous amounts of food and water, and belching out methane. (Imagine how many resources would be saved each year if we stopped farming sheep!) Regardless of how they're being used -- whether it's for food or for wool -- our exploitation of methane-producing animals is one of the greatest threats to the environment we're currently facing.

Positive Feedback Loop

All this information may not sound very scary, probably because climate change is widely accepted as a threat to the world, but we don't seem to be too concerned about it; at least, we're not concerned enough to tweak our habits. Greenhouse gases (GHGs) like CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide (an even more potent GHG than methane, of which animal agriculture is responsible for 65 percent of human-related emissions) create a "greenhouse effect."[3] These gases become trapped within the atmosphere, causing the air to become warmer than normal. The phenomenon is similar to developing a fever; though the temperature is only rising a couple degrees, that's enough to create monumental, cataclysmic change.

One of the symptoms of this fever is the melting of permafrost, which not only causes sea levels to rise and endangers humans, but also exposes methane bubbles beneath the surface. When exposed, these methane bubbles can explode and release even more methane into the air, warming the environment even faster, which then leads to the permafrost melting more quickly and releasing even more methane. This is called a positive feedback loop.[7]

Rising temperatures will also lead to desertification and drought, and in developing nations, this can cause catastrophe as access to necessities like food and water will become limited.[3] In the developed world, though we are the main contributors to everyone's destruction, we will be the last ones to suffer the consequences, as we are sheltered with our privilege. But this also means that we are the ones that can start the reversal process...preferably before it's too late.

Alternatives

Wool is like the milk of the textile industry: they sneak it into everything. It's often used in rugs, mattresses, sofas and chairs, along with its common use in sweaters, socks, and winterwear. You'll even find that some tennis balls get their fluffy outer coating from wool! When we think of the devastation of animal agriculture to the ecosystem and the natural environment, along with the natural resources wasted in the arduous farm-to-closet process, choosing nearly any plant-based textile instead is better. Though cotton is considered one of the more water-intensive crops commonly used for clothing, it's still superior to animal-based clothes. Some other options are bamboo, hemp, flax, and linen. You could also try thrifting your clothes or purchasing rPET (recycled polyester) products.