Overview of the 2024/2025 Northeast Scouring Pilot Study

The Northeast has been challenged over the past decade (and beyond!) with adequate and timely access to the scouring of wool. Without scouring, the ability to create new products that range from home and fashion products to building and gardening materials is at a snail’s pace.

For this study, we interviewed over 20 mills, 70 farmers, fibersheds in the U.S. and Europe, and countless knitters, textile artists, bio materials engineers, and landscape architects. The majority of farmers that want to process their wool say they need help in reaching a wider market to sell their product, and that it’s not economically viable to pursue this path due to the amount of time it takes to do marketing research alongside running a farm.

While there are spinning mills that offer scouring, most don’t want to promote that they offer the service and prefer to clean the wool themselves. Mills that get dirty wool give preference to clean wool and customers report (on average) waiting for a year to get their wool back. The cost and wait time means a loss in sales at markets and little incentive to do anything but throw out their wool or stockpile it in fields and barns. “It’s just not worth it,” is something we hear all the time.

Local mills and businesses that process wool into insulation, duvet covers, erosion and frost blankets are open to receiving clean wool to make products, adding a financial boost to farmers, but they can’t use dirty wool in their machines. This doesn’t help farmers.

Drawing on a region (the Northeast including Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York) we looked at a number of factors (supply, costs, water, energy, tools, and infrastructure) to create a replicable and regionally malleable template for other Fibersheds to use and to create regional scouring. While we did come up with what this might look like in the form of an active regional studio that would act as part incubator, part makerspace, we realized there was a big piece that needed to be tackled before that could happen. Mapping.

We see this mapping as vital to helping wool farmers in our region see their wool’s value, and an exciting way to keep them engaged and prospering on their land.

A waste wool mapping system would be a digital tool designed to track, visualize, and coordinate the availability, movement, and potential uses of waste wool across the Northeast. This kind of system would help a potential wool scouring co-op to understand:

-Particular regions in the Northeast where the most waste wool is being produced

-How much is available and when

-What type or quality of wool it is for specific products

Benefits of a Waste Wool Mapping System

-Optimizes logistics and prevents dumping or burning of wool

-Enables value-added planning (e.g., locating best areas for insulation manufacturing)

-Makes it easier to match supply with product

-Empowers a co-op and stakeholders to plan infrastructure or investment

-While there is currently a regional organization connecting farmers to buyers of their wool, there’s still the problem of a middleman. This mapping system would serve as a Craigslist of sorts or Facebook Marketplace, connecting farmers to buyers. 100% of the profit would go to the farmer. While this model isn’t the typical sexy capitalist model and will not make a company money, it will be a significant factor in keeping more farmers on the land and offering environmental rewards for both soil, carbon sequestration and water quality. Give farmers the opportunity to make money off their wool and they might just be invested to work towards having cleaner, healthier wool.

Once we can create a map to support farmers, we can look to that exciting scouring hub/makerspace that will enable a number of markets including organic gardeners/small nurseries, homesteaders, natural product stores, DIY enthusiasts and builders and architects, to create many products including:

-Felted acoustic panels

-Insulation

-Natural fire-retardant barrier panels

-Chopped or shredded raw wool added to wet plaster to create buildings (adds fiber strength and crack resistance)

-Natural soundproofing panels

-Gardening cloths and mulch mats of varying thicknesses

-Mattress or cushion stuffing

-Pet bedding or toys

-Biodegradable containers for seedlings

-Erosion control mats combined with jute or coir

-Products to help social issues around the unhoused (sleeping mats, felted jackets, foldable tents)

The maker space would operate as a co-op and offer washing, picking, carding, felting and a range of products to be made for farmers (building as well as gardening products)

Services would include: 

-Grant-funded farmer education: Co-op may qualify for agricultural or small business development grants that fund equipment, marketing, or training programs.

-Would service small-scale Northeast sheep farmers who produce wool not being used

-Farmers would receive payment for their wool with pre-made building or gardening products, can also purchase wholesale

-Collaborations with university fiber programs to add to curriculum

-Collaborations with state and local government for environmental uses (and storytelling)

-Space will also host events + workshops for more revenue streams

The potential of following this type of rollout from mapping to makerspace/scouring space, could service farmers and beyond to boost a regional wool economy.

Anyone want to support the mapping system with a grant? I have a map template ready to go!

Email amy@senefibershed.org to learn more or if you have any questions.