NEW YORK – The environmental impact of wool could be five times greater than that of conventional cotton, according to a new report from the Center for Biological Diversity and Collective Fashion Justice’s Circumfauna initiative.
Using Higg data, the pair point to wool’s “heavy price tag of greenhouse gas emissions, land use, biodiversity loss and pollution”, and have urged fashion industry stakeholders to commit to phasing out or reducing wool use by at least 50 per cent by 2025.
The Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), which owns the Higg Index, has however questioned the NGOs’ report and told Ecotextile News: “We don’t support the use of the [Higg] Materials Sustainability Index as the sole argument for switching from one material to another, as there are many other factors to consider beyond those that lifecycle assessments measure.”
