Like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, the synthetics industry is pretending to be a force for sustainability, but it’s just greenwashing says wool campaigner Peter Ackroyd

As the planet drowns in plastic, and “greenwashing” continues to increase, we have forgotten one of nature’s simplest truths: that the materials we live in and upon must one day return to the earth. I have spent a lifetime among fibres; not in the poetic sense, though there is poetry in wool – but in the business of wool from the field through to the finished fibre, and those who craft and make products from it. In all that time, one thing has become painfully clear: humanity seems to have wrapped itself in plastic.

It’s a strange irony of our so-called “age of sustainability” that we now live amid a rising tide of synthetics, the very materials born from the fossil fuels we’re supposed to be moving away from. Polyester, acrylic, and nylon: these are the quiet saboteurs of the modern age. They masquerade as being convenient and affordable but are, in truth, emblems of waste, deception, and environmental decay.

When the Campaign for Wool began 15 years ago under the patronage of the then Prince of Wales, now His Majesty King Charles III, we were guided by a simple idea: that wool, nature’s own performance fibre, could help restore balance between human need and the natural world. We were not launching a nostalgia project; we were reasserting a truth. Wool is circular. It is renewable, biodegradable, and enduring. It belongs to the earth.

There is a moral dimension to wool. It is not only a material but a metaphor; for continuity, care, and a respect for the living world.

A Material World Gone Awry
Yet the world has moved in the opposite direction. Since 2000, global fibre production has almost doubled, driven almost entirely by synthetics. Some 70% of textiles produced today come from petrochemicals, and the consequences are insidious.

Each wash of a synthetic garment releases microplastics into our rivers and oceans. According to Apparel Insider (a specialist trade magazine which focuses on the textile industry), new marine studies show that while wool biodegrades fully within months, synthetic fibres can linger for centuries, fragmenting but never disappearing. This is a ghostly inheritance for all future generations. We now discover synthetic fibres at the very depths of our oceans, or frozen into Arctic snow. We even find microplastics absorbed within the human body. It’s an extraordinary self-sabotage; as if modern civilisation, dissatisfied with polluting only the air and soil, decided to lace itself with plastic too.

The Greenwashing of Conscience
What compounds this tragedy is the extraordinary ingenuity with which we manage to disguise it. We now live in an era of what I can only call synthetic virtue – the marketing of environmental conscience without the inconvenience of change. Fast fashion retailers peddle garments labelled “recycled” or “eco-conscious”, while omitting that their “recycled” polyester derives from plastic bottles. What they often fail to mention is that this one-way journey prevents those bottles from being recycled again. This is not circularity; it is sleight of hand. The “green” polyester shirt, which continues to shed plastic even after being worn and washed, ultimately ends its short life in a landfill. Its only difference from virgin polyester is that it briefly detoured through a public relations department.

Meanwhile, the European Union’s Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) methodology (the very tool intended to guide sustainable consumer choice) currently risks enshrining such falsehoods. It measures environmental impact in ways that penalise natural fibres for their longevity and misrepresents their biodegradability.

The Campaign for Wool, alongside the Make the Label Count initiative and other natural fibre industry partners worldwide, has fought hard to correct this. We are committed to ensuring that when consumers choose “sustainable” clothing, the labels accurately reflect their environmental impact.

Wool: Nature’s Graceful Technology
Wool, by contrast, requires no rebranding. It has been quietly perfecting itself for millennia. It keeps a sheep warm in the highlands of New Zealand and the Hebrides; it keeps us warm in city apartments and country cottages. It breathes when we sweat, insulates when we shiver, and returns to the soil at the end of its useful life.

It is not a product of chemistry but of ecology. Modern science continues to affirm what shepherds have always known. Wool is naturally flame-retardant, odour-resistant, and thermoregulating. It requires less washing and outlasts synthetic equivalents by years.

Wool invites slowness; it resists disposability. It is, in this sense, an antidote to the modern condition. In a world of disposable goods, it is a rare example of durability and grace. Innovation today is not about reinventing wool, but rediscovering it. From Merino activewear to wool insulation, biodegradable horticultural mats to antimicrobial hospital textiles, wool is proving that sustainability can mean beauty, comfort, and craftsmanship.

The tragedy is that economics, not ethics, has long dictated fibre choice. Synthetic fibres are cheap, artificially so. Their price does not include the cost of cleaning rivers, filtering microplastics, or repairing ecosystems.

For decades, the textile industry has been seduced by this illusion of efficiency: garments that cost pennies to produce, sold for a few pounds, worn a handful of times, and discarded. This cannot be defined as progress, but a loop – a closed circuit of consumption that leaves no space for meaning or craft.

It’s not wool that is old-fashioned; it’s the modern habit of speed and waste that is primitive. When one handles a well-made wool garment or rug, there is an awareness of lineage: of the shepherd, the spinner, the weaver, the maker. Wool embodies a rhythm. It is slower, circular, patient.

In the Idler‘s own spirit, wool might be seen as a kind of useful idleness; a material that reminds us to live within our means and seasons. The sheep does not strive; it grazes, it grows, it gives. Each year, the fleece renews itself, a quiet act of generosity.

At a time when humans are generating waste at unmanageable levels, it is unconscionable that our clothing, something so intimate, so universal, should contribute to that destruction. Every shirt, every jumper, every carpet made from synthetics adds to a planetary burden we can no longer ignore. The Campaign for Wool’s mission remains as urgent as ever: to re-educate both the public and policymakers, to challenge flawed legislation, and to celebrate the extraordinary natural intelligence of wool.

The Quiet Revolution of Traceability
Across the world, accreditation and traceability schemes – from Woolmark to New Zealand’s ZQ and the Responsible Wool Standard – are gradually transforming how we understand fibre provenance. Consumers can now trace their wool to a specific farm and flock, in the same way as a fine wine can be traced to the vineyard it came from. They can be assured that the animals were well treated, the land was responsibly managed, and that the fibre was renewable in every sense.

As we look to the next 15 years, wool’s most significant potential lies in its alignment with new technologies rather than opposition to them. Artificial intelligence may also soon allow instant fibre authentication, enabling accurate traceability and eliminating false “eco” claims. Digital storytelling can immerse consumers in the journey from farm to fashion. But technology must serve nature, not replace it.

Suppose we succeed in aligning innovation with ecology. In that case, wool will not be a nostalgic material but a futuristic one. This could provide a bridge between the old world of craft and the new world of conscience.

Conclusion: The Wisdom of the Fleece
The Roman philosopher Seneca wrote, “Nothing is ours except time.” How curious, then, that we fill our brief time on earth with things that will outlast us in the worst possible way. A polyester dress will outlive its wearer by 400 years. A wool jumper, meanwhile, will quietly return to soil, feeding the grass that feeds the sheep that begins the cycle again. This is the logic of nature. It is circular, elegant, and sufficient. It requires no marketing jargon, no pseudo-science, no moral grandstanding. Only a little of our attention.

And perhaps that is where the idler, in the truest sense, is wiser than the industrious. For to be idle is to notice; to observe the texture of things, the slowness of renewal, the simple grace of the sheep on the hillside. In that stillness, one might glimpse the lesson we most need to relearn: that the answers to our modern crises are not to be found in laboratories or boardrooms, but in the quiet intelligence of the natural world.

From that soft, resilient fleece – layered like memory, spun from patience, and stitched into time – there could well be the beginning of a gentler economy, and perhaps, a wiser age.

Peter Ackroyd MBE is chairman of the Campaign for Wool (campaignforwool.org) which aims to educate consumers about the benefits of wool and help to support and grow the wool industry.

This article is from Idler 107.

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