A wool jumper knitted in 1986 is still in a wardrobe in Britain, doing fine. The vegan fleece bought in 2026 will be in a hole in the ground by 2031 and still there in 2226.
The wool jumper:
- Made of grass, rain and time.
- Its carbon came out of the sky last spring.
- Warms up as it gets wet.
- Takes a third of its weight in water before it admits it.
- Meets flame, chars, stops.
- Buried, gone inside a year.
- Sixteen per cent nitrogen. Feeds the field on the way out.
- £80 in 1985. Roughly £250 today. Bought once.
The vegan fleece:
- Made of crude oil, hexane and a very long boat.
- Its carbon came out of the ground in the Permian.
- Goes clammy at the first hint of rain.
- Holds nothing, and complains about it.
- Meets flame, liquefies, welds to skin.
- Buried, still there in two centuries.
- Sheds 700,000 fibres a wash. Feeds the fish.
- £40 in 2026. Bought ten times. £400.
Two of those columns describe an environmental catastrophe and it is not the one with a face.
Wool solved every problem the outdoor industry currently has a patent pending on. Waterproofing, warmth when soaked, fire performance, odour, biodegradability. It solved them before anyone thought to write them down, using weather, and it grows the whole apparatus back every spring at no charge to anybody.
Polyester solved one. Cost. It solved it by moving the bill onto the water table, where nobody has to look at it, and textiles are now Europe's fourth largest source of microplastic pollution.
The Marines banned polyester outside the wire in Iraq because it was welding itself into men's burns. Aircraft seat covers are 89 to 95 per cent wool because the cabin has to survive a vertical burn test. Every institution that has properly investigated what fire does to a human being has quietly gone back to the sheep.
The farmer who grew that fleece got about three pounds for it.
But yes. The sheep is the problem.
Standing in a field in mid-Wales, in the rain, growing next year's.
The sheep is the problem.