Wool data — C I R C U M F A U N A

Data on wool

Over 1,836 more square metres of land must be clear for production to make a knit sweater from Australian wool, rather than Tencell lyocell

To produce 1 medium weight knit sweater made of Australian wool, 1837.5 square metres of land must be cleared or kept cleared.

Small ruminants, including sheep and goats, are responsible for 474 million metric tons of CO2e each year, equivalent to taking 103 million cars off the road for a year.

To produce one bale of Australian cotton requires 367 times less land than that needed to produce one bale of Australian wool.

Using Australian wool rather than cotton fibre to produce the same knit sweater emits about 27 times more carbon emissions.

Growing Australian wool for light knit sweater causes 12.81 kilograms of carbon equivalent emissions to be released.

To produce one bale of Australian wool, 44.04 hectares of land must be cleared or left in a state of arrested development.

The organic effluent load from a typical wool scour is similar to that of the sewerage from a town of 30,000 people.

It takes 220 metric tons of plastic resin to treat 1200 metric tons of wool, in order for it to be considered ‘super-washed’ wool, sold as easy-to-wash-wool.

For every kilogram of processed wool produced by the common aqueous cleaning process, about 17 litres of effluent with a high chemical oxygen demand (COD) value is generated.

A case study released by Meat and Livestock Australia found a slaughterhouse killing sheep used more than 15.4 million litres of water each week.