Wool and microplastics: choosing a living fiber

Here's a statistic that deserves to be much more widely known than it currently is: a single 5-kilogram load of synthetic fabrics can release up to 6 million plastic microfibers into wastewater. These microfibers, too small to be filtered by most water treatment systems, end up in our rivers, lakes, and ultimately, our oceans.

Wool completely avoids this problem, for a very simple reason: it's not made of plastic. Composed of keratin, a natural protein, wool does not fragment into plastic particles when washed. It does lose some fibers over time, like all textile materials, but these fibers are biodegradable—they return to nature rather than accumulating indefinitely as persistent pollution.

What makes this difference even more pertinent is the growing scale of microplastic pollution. Researchers have even found microplastics and nanoplastics directly in human tissues—including in arterial plaques—with worrying results regarding associated cardiovascular risks. This is no longer just an abstract environmental issue: it has become a very concrete public health issue.

For you, as an artisan who already values natural fibers, this information reinforces an argument you may already intuitively hold, without necessarily having the precise figures to support it.

At Makeloo Studio, this issue is an integral part of our mission: each skein of De par chez nous that we produce represents a concrete step away from the invisible plastic pollution accumulating in our waterways, in Lanaudière as elsewhere. Choosing local wool is also choosing not to contribute to this silent environmental burden that already affects our rivers and, ultimately, the St. Lawrence River.

Source: International Wool Textile Organisation, Wool Notes, Issue 3 (2024).