Ayton recycler wonders what happens to the world’s waste wool

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AYTON – Jennifer Osborn wants to hear wool stories.

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With the thousands of sheep spread across the province and the country, she says every sheep produces waste wool and she wants to know how producers are managing it.

She is the founder of EcoWool, a company that specializes in processing waste wool into usable products.

She plans to shine a spotlight on the wool that she calls an undertilized yet consistent agricultural product “that just happens.”

“It would be silly not to find ways of utilizing it.”

Osborn has been researching and using waste wool for more than 20 years. She has created a wool pellet for gardeners as well as gardening wool bats and says her first interest was in using wool as an insulation product.

“I need personal accounts,” she says.

Recently she asked the members of an online lamb community to share the stories of what they do with their wool. That the wool is out there is well-known, she says. What’s needed is the personal stories to give face and scope to the problem.

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“It’s going to be fascinating.”

Eventually she may take a report to investors, but confesses that going from the barn to the boardroom can be a challenge.

Finding uses for waste wool isn’t just a challenge for Canada. It’s a global issue. The answers she received over the first few days were far-reaching.

One person responded that their long wool is all sold for dollars per pound. But most have lamented that it either goes on the manure pile or is landfilled. A Manitoba producer said theirs is used in the potato patch.

Ayton says wool isn’t sexy like robotics and AI technology. It’s not considered a food so is ineligible for many agricultural programs. And yet, “a sheep is the only animal that can clothe, house and feed you – and you still have the animal!”

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A flock with 1,000 sheep produces anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 lbs of wool annually. “This is a valuable resource that is not being used,” she says.

Stats Canada says there are .5 million sheep in Canada, with around 170,000 in Ontario. Only three per cent of Canadian wool is suitable for use in clothing, while about 14 per cent is suitable for use in coats and clothing.

Around the world, her website says, the top 22 wool-producing countries produce over 1.9 billion kilograms of wool annually. Out of that wool, 1.4 billion kilograms isn’t accounted for.

Disposing of any kind of wool is a challenge. The wool that is dumped in a manure pile is likely to be felt. If it’s spread with manure it will wrap around everything and will not decompose easily.

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Osborne uses the bum and belly wool for her EcoWool pellets.

She has not worked with the Campaign for Wool, she said. But she was a founding member of the Upper Canada Fibre Shed. While it “moved on,” to focus on high quality fibres, she focused on the waste.

Osborn has posted videos demonstrating how to use her EcoWool pellets. She says wool pellets are more sustainable than peat, have a high nitrogen content, and work well when thinly layered with potting soil by distributing water evenly throughout the pot.

Peat is “critical for preventing and mitigating the effects of climate change, preserving biodiversity, minimizing flood risk, and ensuring safe drinking water.”

In addition, peatlands “store more carbon than all other vegetation types in the world combined… yet damaged peatlands are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions.”

Adding her wool pellets into soil during planting she says, is like “wrapping your seeds in a wet wool sweater.” The pellets release water slowly.

EcoWool also markets garden felt, an environmentally friendly alternative to landscape barrier. She also does custom processing of all varieties of fibre including alpaca, and dogs and cats.

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