Local clothing: What is that? How an environmental policy concept is understood

Ingun Grimstad Klepp, Vilde Haugrønning & Kirsi Laitala

The textile industry is characterized by global mass production and has an immense impact on the environment. One garment can travel around the world through an extensive value chain before reaching its final consumption destination. The consumer receives little information about how the item was produced due to a lack of policy regulation. In this article, we explore understandings of ‘local clothing’ and how the concept could be an alternative to the current clothing industry. The analysis is based on fifteen interviews with eighteen informants from Western Norway as part of the research project KRUS about Norwegian wool. Five ways of understanding local clothing were identified from the interviews: production, place-specific garments, local clothing habits, home-based production and local circulation. We lack a language with which to describe local clothing that covers local forms of production as an alternative to current clothing production. As such, the article highlights an important obstacle to reorganization: local clothing needs a vocabulary among the public, in politics and in the public sector in general, with which to describe the diverse production processes behind clothing and textiles and their material properties.

Click here to see the article (ingentaconnect.com)

WOOLUME: Mapping the market for acoustic and sound absorbing products made of wool

Anna Schytte Sigaard and Vilde Haugrønning

Abstract

This report is the first deliverable from work package 2 of the WOOLUME project. The main goal of WOOLUME is to
explore different ways of using wool from Polish Mountain Sheep to achieve better utilisation of resources and value
creation. The aim of the report has been to map the market for acoustic and sound absorbing products made of wool to
examine the potential to introduce coarse wool as a material. This has been done through desktop research and
interviews with a focus on the qualities of wool as a natural product. Findings show that though man-made materials
dominate the market for acoustic products due to lower prices, wool is preferred as a material due to its natural
properties as well as aesthetics. Producers using wool consider their products to be high-end, intended for people who
want very good quality products and who are willing to pay a higher price to achieve this. However, few producers use
coarse wool in these products, and many are made of pure Merino wool. Using Merino wool which is often considered
of very fine quality due to the low micron-count does not correspond with the ideal of good utilisation of resources.
Therefore, we are proposing to utilise coarse wool which today is discarded as a mere by-product to meat-production.
Merino could instead be used for products where fineness and softness are important factors such as for clothing. In
addition, we argue for the rawness and uniqueness of the look of coarse wool as positive in terms of aesthetics and as
something that adds to the position of acoustic products made of wool as high-end.

Click here to read the full report (oda.oslomet.no).