How wool has come to be seen as worse for the environment than synthetics

If you want a planet-friendly building, then choose synthetic products and not wool.

That’s the message wool manufacturers are getting from independent companies that investigated the impact wool and synthetic materials used in the building industry have on the environment.

Chief executive of T&R Interiors, a company that makes wool acoustic panels for commercial buildings, Natasha Thwaite, said the rise of environmentally conscious consumers was the biggest opportunity to regain market share for wool, but the need to certify the impact of materials used during building was a new hurdle for the wool market.

Government urged the use of environmental product declarations (EPD), called green certificates, that calculated the carbon footprint of materials and showed synthetic materials were better for the planet, Thwaite said.

READ MORE:
* Natural fibres are all the rage so why not wool?
* US company buys NZ wool for home insulation
* Wool carpet better for people and the environment, say farmers

These certifications were increasingly gaining global recognition in building environmental rating schemes, including the Green Star scheme in New Zealand, according to the website of local independent assessor Branz.

Thwaite said the certificates were based on the carbon life cycle of a product, and assigned a larger carbon footprint to wool than it did tosynthetic materials.

The wool considered the emissions produced on a farm and the methane produced by sheep, amongst other things, Thwaite said.

In contrast, the ability to recycle synthetic products reduced their carbon rating on a green certificate, she said.

While these certifications were becoming common internationally, it disadvantaged New Zealand’s natural, biodegradable and sustainable materials like wool, she said.

The debate about the sustainability of wool was ongoing. Wool carpet manufacturer Cavalier was a lawsuit with rival Godfrey Hirst, about its claims that wool was better for the environment than synthetics.

Technical director at certifier Thinkstep-ANZ, Jeff Vickers, said the carbon footprint of wool per square metre of material was often more than for synthetic materials.

There were multiple ways of working out what the environmental impact or life cycle of wool was, he said.

Thinkstep-ANZ used a European standard that gave wool an economic value as a co-product of meat production, and divided the planet impact between meat and wool..

The footprint of wool took into consideration the methane sheep belched and fertiliser runoff into waterways on a farm, Vickers said.

Processes to convert wool into usable fibre increased its carbon footprint, he said.

Synthetic materials were made during the petrol making process, but the carbon footprint of petrol was not part of calculations into synthetic materials’ footprint, because petrol was a product manufactured after synthetic materials were already produced, he said..

Textiles in New Zealand were mostly taken to landfills after being replaced, and while wool was biodegradable, it also released methane while biodegrading, he said.

Synthetic textiles often had a lower carbon footprint because no methane was released after they were thrown away, Vickers said.

Calculating the footprint of wool was only done for companies that specifically asked for it, he said.

A lecturer in architectural science and sustainable systems design at the Victoria University of Wellington, Nilesh Bakshi, said the fundamental problem with synthetic materials was they introduced ”forever plastics” into the environment.

The building industry had a responsibility to determine how products would be dealt with at the end of their life, he said.

Synthetic materials could only be recycled until they were no longer fit for use, and could not be the only product used by the building industry, Bakshi said.

The idea that synthetic materials were better than wool was flawed, he said.

Synthetic materials, with properties that were bad for the environment, could be efficiently manufactured and could at the same time have a lower carbon footprint than wool, he said.

The reason a carbon footprint was used in certification was to show the global warming potential of materials, but carbon should not be the only factor considered, he said.

High carbon materials were not necessarily the worst materials, he said.

Environmental product declarations were however the best way to measure the impact of multiple materials, he said.

Brad Stuart, specification manager at Terralana, a company that produced wool insulation for buildings, said government departments were pushing the industry to get environmental product declarations.

It was not worthwhile to have such a declaration if it simply said wool was worse for the planet than synthetic products, Stuart said.

An environmental product declaration could cost up to $100,000, he said.

The Ministry for Primary Industries funded $250,000 for a one-year project by Wools of New Zealand to provide a natural alternative for the commercial building sector.

Jarrod Booker, communications manager at AgResearch, said the initial emissions from the fuel to make the carpet were not carbon free and must be counted.

In the bigger picture of what’s better for the planet, the “end of life” phase, where research showed wool was renewable and biodegradable, needed to be considered, Booker said.

The wool industry needed to decide what the actual impact was it wanted to address, and whether it was end of life or current carbon emissions, he said.