February - a climate-saving house hug
Written for and originally published by Homes & Gardens
Last summer, I was locked down in rural Lincolnshire, escaping our one-bed London flat to my Mum and stepdad’s farm just in time. It was a completely idyllic setting to be constrained to as we watched the summer come to life. Amid the wildlife in hedges and woodland, the ten acre field next to the house contained fairly intensely reared ewes with their lambs. By high summer the grass was overgrazed to billiards and the only vegetation above ankle height taller were thistles which held aloft snagged wool. The hedges were sheepshape sculpted too, reaching into the field only above three foot, with more snagged wool held in the fence or branches. I reckoned I could have gleaned a barrowfull of fibre from the field with ease. My designer’s mind set bout thinking what could be done with it.
When shearing day came, it revealed a tragic waste I was not aware of. Wool is barely worth shearing from the animal. Wool has declined in value since the 1950’s because of a modern taste for microplastic-rich synthetic fibres. Plastic has replaced so much that was once natural, I often wonder if food could be made plastic it would, and people would buy it. A shepherd’s main income is from the meat their flock will yield, but the sheep have been bred for shearing too, so they are trimmed in an intense profit-less day. Our local shepherd took away most of the fleeces to try and cover the costs of the day but left large amounts of seemingly low grade fibre in the field to rot. I have read of heaps of wool destined for compost other farms this year. Coronavirus had closed the international wool market and compounded a decades long decline in demand, pricing a ewe’s fleece at 25p this year, with shearing costs of £1.10 per ewe - a huge loss-making activity. Bafflingly in this instance, a sensible, renewable, natural material struggles to compete with their oil-based opponents, so we as consumers have to consciously spend more or look harder for them.
I remember this as I’m sitting in my draughty Victorian seaside terrace as a northerly gale hammers my window and up through the floorboards, not just to remind myself of warmer days but because I’m researching insulation, in some hurry with our second baby just weeks away from arriving. 14% of the UK’s emissions is from energy used in homes, and the Committee on Climate Change estimate that we will not be able to meet out legally binding targets of being carbon neutral by 2050 unless we eliminate this emission. Demand for energy must be reduced by better insulating homes, which of course also saves on energy bills and reduces the shudders you feel walking around your house and encountering a biting draught.
To meet this challenge, cheap mineral based fibre can be stuffed between joists and rafters to reduce heat leaks. This is a good start, but this material comes with a carbon cost, around 3kg of CO2 per kg of insulation. Some manufacturers seem to be tackling their emissions, such as Knauf who have apparently significantly reduced their products embodied CO2. But wool can be carbon neutral and it’s using a waste stream, fighting two modern ecological battles at once. Thermafleece www.thermafleece.com offer wool insulation that’s carbon negative and made in the UK from British wool - a completely sensible product offering us hope in this climate emergency. I’m not a supporter of intensive sheep farming, always opting for wildlife friendly farming, but I strongly believe in using and surrounding ourselves with natural over fossil materials, and local over global, so we should use this abundant domestic waste resource. Often, it feels an impossible task to reject global products and find local and natural, but organisations like Fibreshed (www.southwestenglandfibreshed.co.uk) offer help with this, in particular connecting regenerative wool and other fibres with manufacturers and consumers to build regional systems.
There are other eco insulation options reaching price-parity too, like hemp and even mycelium, but right now it seems sensible to support wool which, it’s worth remembering, was once the backbone of the English economy.
Aside from the material, what better way to get to know your house intimately than to crawl under and over it tucking it in with thick blankets of cosiness? Partially, if it is wool, without having to don PPE to protect yourself from synthetic fibres. As my pallets of insulation arrive, I’m ready to give my house a big warm climate-saving hug.