Wool From NZ Makes Sheep Inc.’s Carbon Neg Hoodie

The production of UK-based start-up Sheep Inc.’s 100 per cent carbon negative hoodie starts on three farms in New Zealand, where the business sources its wool, Adele Peters reports for Fast Company.

By using regenerative agriculture practices – things like managing how the sheep graze so that plants growing on the farms can help capture the maximum amount of carbon in the soil – producing the wool captures more carbon than the farms emit, Peters writes.

“Over the last two years, we’ve been running a research project with the farms to really figure out what that final number is—how much impact does a kilogram of wool coming from a particular farm [have]?” CEO and co-founder Edzard van der Wyck says. The farms sequester enough carbon, it turns out, to more than cover the emissions in the other stages of the hoodie’s life cycle.

Eventually, it might be possible to use wind-powered ships to deliver the wool from New Zealand, for example. On the farms, farmers are experimenting with methods like adding seaweed to feed so the sheep burp less methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Original article by Adele Peters, Fast Company, May 14, 2021.