Sheep are what is known in agricultural terms as dual-purpose animals. (They were triple purpose back in time, but I will come back to that.) The dual part is meat, as we all know. They are solar engineers, the sun grows grass, which we don’t eat, the lambs turn grass into meat as lamb and mutton, which most of us do eat. I don’t think I have ever eaten a piece of lamb and not enjoyed it. The second purpose is wool. Jerseys, socks, carpets, felt hats, tweed, the list is endless. This sheep product that is renewable, natural, and insulative. Its insulative properties actually improve when it’s damp.
For the last few decades, the price of wool has crashed’ due to synthetic, non-renewable, oil-based fibres which are cheap to industrialise and turn out. They make things rather cheekily called fleeces that don’t have sheep fleeces in them. These synthetic fibres shed micro plastics and pollute the air in our homes and the environment generally, we should wear more wool. As this wool is shorn from the sheep we eat and deliver to your door, and is relatively inexpensive, some bright spark decided to insulate meat boxes etc. with it. Woolcool was born.
Woolcool Sheeps Wool Insulation
This is the renewable, recyclable, light weight, highly insulated material in our meat boxes. It saves us having to use polystyrene, it saves you having to dispose polystyrene! It saves the polystyrene polluting the sea and annoying David Attenborough and every right-thinking human being. When we tested Woolcool, we found it performed better and kept the meat safer than any other material. As I was born and brought up a sheep farmer (and shearer), this pleased me a great deal. After years of wondering why no one seemed to want to pay for this wonderful wool, now it has an extra market.
The third and forgotten use for sheep was providing light. Domestic animals produced meat and fat, some of the fat was eaten and used for cooking but a lot of the fat from sheep was used for candles. Mixed with a little beeswax and they smelt good to. This is why many of the breeds of British sheep have more fat on them than the modern palate wants to eat. They were bred to produce candles.
Back to Woolcool. We want to know what ideas you have to recycle this natural, green, packaging. Here are a couple of ideas on the Woolcool Instagram page.
We are going to run a competition for the best or funniest or greenest use for this natural packaging. I have used it for pipe lagging, dogs’ beds, and have tried making it into felt. Start making, crafting and creating, “thinking inside the box” and in a week or so we will start the competition going.
We like to be green, it isn’t greenwash, it is in our DNA, we have many initiatives and adaptions to reduce our carbon footprint. Woolcool is just one of them.