Each garment is fully traceable, comes with own trackable sheep
Founders Edzard van der Wyck and Michael Wessely founded Sheep Inc in October 2019, with the idea of creating a new model for how a fashion business could behave. Thus, the world’s first naturally carbon negative fashion brand was born. In an interview with Paulami Chatterjee, van der Wyck speaks about why they chose merino wool as the raw material for their garments, how every garment is totally traceable through its NFC tag and the carbon footprint reduction it promises.
How old is Sheep Inc as a brand? What are the backgrounds like of the founder/founders?
Sheep Inc launched in October 2019. It is the first naturally carbon negative fashion brand. It was born to show there is a better, more progressive way to produce fashion where the clothes we buy are no longer part of the problem, but part of the solution.
I started becoming aware of the impact that fashion has on the environment when I was running my previous business, which was a D2C brand focussed on women’s underwear. That, combined with the birth of my son, made me question what kind of legacy I wanted to leave behind.
So, I left my business to pursue what would end up becoming Sheep Inc with the idea of creating a new model for how a fashion business could behave. At the time, I was lucky enough to find an amazing partner in my co-founder (and great friend) Michael Wessely — who serendipitously also happened to be searching for setting something up that could have a meaningfully positive impact on the planet.
And our starting point was to understand how you could create beautiful products, whilst still addressing the climate emergency. Whilst also aiming to bring awareness and behaviour change to how people shop for fashion.
So that’s where the thinking and the journey started…
Where do you source the wool for the Biophilic knitwear products?
The Biophilic knitwear products are ZQ certified merino wool. The three stations we work with, Lake Hawea, Omarama and Middlehurst, adopt regenerative farming practices, maximising their soil’s ability to remove carbon dioxide from the air by storing it as organic carbon.
To put it into context, the earth’s soil contains about 2,500 gigatons of carbon — that’s more than three times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and four times the amount stored in all living plants and animals. Soil has the capacity to act as a natural “carbon sink” through photosynthesis. Nature has an amazing ability to convert carbon dioxide and sunlight into nutrients.
To optimise for sequestration, there are several basic principles that farmers use to build healthy soil:
1.They grow a diversity of plants, helping cultivate nutrient dense soil, increasing soil carbon, and reducing the risk of pests and diseases.
2.They let the soil rest. Constantly ploughing the soil and using harmful chemicals make it difficult for complex soil ecosystems to thrive.
3.They keep living roots in the soil providing living organisms a constant source of nutrition. Soil microorganisms help prevent soil erosion, increase water infiltration rates, and provide plants with key nutrients.
Moreover, to counter the methane output of sheep our farms are working with scientists and researchers in New Zealand to trial innovative methods as seaweed supplements that, in test cases, have reduced the sheep’s methane output by up to 60 per cent. It is all this innovation that happens on farm that is not done at “traditional” wool farms.
Where does the manufacturing of the products happen?
This carbon-negative fibre is then processed by Sheep Inc’s industry-leading supply chain partners across Europe, who run on 100 per cent solar power, to spin the yarn, manufacture the garment and run logistics to ensure all manufacturing happens entirely carbon-neutrally.
Using the next evolution in material science, Sheep Inc works with German yarn mill Südwolle to spin the extra-fine merino wool and apply a chlorine- free treatment to the yarn called Eternity X-Care. A pioneering, performance-increasing treatment for the wool that uses no chlorine or harmful chemicals and is Bluesign and Oekotex certified. This is with the aim to achieve unparalleled quality, machine-washability, and generational durability.
Each hoodie is then created by Portuguese specialist knitter Fatextil using 100 per cent solar powered, 3D whole garment knitting machines, to ensure zero-waste manufacturing process. All orders are fulfilled from UK’s first carbon-neutral logistics partner Airbox, which is completely solar powered and uses electric vehicles.
What does it take to become the world’s first carbon negative fashion brand? What were the challenges involved?
It starts with looking at the product needs. So, deciding what characteristics the product should have to make it both highly wearable and highly durable. Because the most sustainable items are ones that stay part of your wardrobe for generations to come.
What follows is then considering what material is best suited to perform the desired function in the most sustainable way possible. For us it was merino wool that fit all our criteria. Being a fibre that can be worn through all seasons thanks to its natural ability to regulate body temperature, one that is incredibly durable whilst also being 100 per cent biodegradable. It also has natural, anti-microbial properties that it self-cleans and odours don’t linger on the fibre, minimising the need to wash it — meaning it has a low lifespan impact.
Once we had figured out what material we were using, we built our supply chain from the bottom up, rather than starting at the factory/manufacturer like traditional fashion brand with a goal to naturally mitigate more CO2 impact than we produce.
Starting from the bottom up, meant in our case starting with the sheep. Our wool is sourced in New Zealand from sheep stations at the forefront of the regenerative farming movement, sequestering more CO2 from the environment than their operations emit — approx. -10.5 kg of CO2 per kg of wool produced.
In addition to their regenerative farming commitments, the sheep stations we work with are also ZQ certified, meaning they conform to the highest animal welfare standards worldwide.
The rest of our suppliers are equally aligned and committed to having a positive carbon impact. With all our manufacturers working with solar electricity and committed to other innovative sustainable manufacturing methods that mean the entire manufacturing stage accounts for only 0.5 kg CO2e.
An important note to add (as we always get asked about this) is about transport. The net emission profile at the farm level far outweighs the negative impact of transport. Transport, if done by ship like we do, is a proportionally small part of our overall footprint, averaging about +0.6 kg of CO2 impact per sweater (compared to that -10.5 kg of CO2 mitigated at farm level).
In general, whilst certainly problematic, transport is nowhere near the biggest issue in most fashion supply chains. In our industry, the raw material, production and use stages are areas where you can make the biggest improvements – which is what we aim to do.
In terms of communication, the main message we wanted to get across when starting Sheep Inc is that we’ve lost touch with the story (and impact) behind the things we wear. 80 per cent of fashion companies today don’t know where their garments’ raw materials come from.
So through the product, we wanted to bring people back in touch and remind them that every product made carries a creation story. And that this provenance journey should be considered before making a purchase.
That’s why each garment is not only fully traceable, but it also comes with its own trackable sheep. To remind customers that every piece of clothing started somewhere. In our case, with a sheep living in New Zealand’s High Country.
The information is easily accessible through an NFC Tag in the hem of the sweater. The tag is made from a castor-bean derived bioplastic called Ecopaxx. A tap of your phone lets you see the sweater’s journey, its carbon footprint at each stage of the supply chain — and it also allows you to name and track a (real-life) sheep on one of the farms that provided the wool. Because awareness is where change really starts to take shape.
How much of carbon footprint reduction do you promise through your brand? What metrics and tools are used to measure this?
We perform a comprehensive Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) for each garment, which takes into account raw materials, manufacturing, transport, packaging and end of life--basically the full impact of the garment, as we don’t want to obfuscate any impact at any stage of the business. All the calculations are independently performed and validated by Carbon Footprint Ltd to ensure impartial third-party accountability and measured against the carbon neutral protocol.
Again, many brands use their own internal calculation methods, but we don’t believe that creates a full fair picture. In addition, consumers are becoming more and more clued on to brands that make bold claims but are in fact green washing. And we wanted to make sure all the great work that is being done by the Sheep Inc team is robustly defensible.
How do your sweaters justify the tagline “Designed for life” and what is the funda of “getting a sheep included when you purchase a sweater”?
Repair is a core part of our proposition. Increasing the average number of times clothes are worn is the most direct lever to capture value and design out waste and pollution in the textiles system. Today in the UK, the average lifetime for an item of clothing is only 2.2 years. Which is why all our knits come with a for-life guarantee meaning that if mending is ever required, we’ll take care of it, for life. We truly want it to be part of our customers' wardrobe for generations.
We are almost two years old. So our products haven’t been in the wild that long, but we have also been having internal conversations about creating a resale/exchange platform for all Sheep Inc items. And we are looking to integrate this into our offering in the near future.
What are the current projects you are running in collaboration with Prof Mark Maslin and what are their goals?
On top of having a naturally negative carbon footprint for all our products, we invest 5 per cent of our revenue into regenerative biodiversity projects. Our Impact Fund investment strategy is focussed on biodiversity innovations and is led in partnership with head of climatology at University College London, professor Mark Maslin.
On average how much does a Sheep Inc sweater or a jumper help in carbon reduction?
About 6 kg of carbon is removed on average, meaning that Sheep Inc has a carbon negative footprint. The first brand to have a regenerative, climate positive impact.
What is the Biophilic Design approach all about? How is it different from ordinary knitwear designs?
Biophilia, by definition, is the idea that humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with nature and other forms of life. To us it means designing and manufacturing products that work with nature. Not against it.
Biophilic Design, as a concept, has been widely used in architecture and interior design, and means designing to enhance our connection to the natural world. By making sure that the structure and design is set up to give us access to natural environments.
In our case, we not only use fully natural fibres and have a manufacturing process that respects nature, but the clothes themselves are designed to reconnect you back to its natural source.
Accessing the NFC Tag located on the hem of our products connects you with the sheep in New Zealand from the same farm the sweater’s wool is from, and makes you part of that natural story.
By giving customers the possibility to name their sheep, track its whereabouts and be kept up to date on its general life events (when it’s been shorn, to when it’s had lambs) the aim is to re-establish that link that has been lost in fashion. That awareness that everything you buy has gone through a journey to get to you.
In our case that journey has zero emissions, zero harm and zero waste.
What are the new innovations in knitwear you may be working on now?
Our hoodie was the first item to be certified naturally carbon-negative, from cradle-to-grave, by a third party. This means each hoodie naturally removes more CO2 from the atmosphere than its manufacturing creates without the need to offset. Watch this space for more innovations.
What does the future of fashion industry look like through your eyes?
Our customers really do span the age groups (from 20 to 80 years old). And it really does split between people who are incredibly engaged with the sustainability message and concept – and those who are just looking for a high-quality garment they can have for a long, long time. But in general, we are very proud of how much our customers spread the word and are advocates of the brand.
The additional great thing has been seeing the transition to a more caring and aware customer. Especially over the last year. We receive an increasing amount of questions each day on animal welfare, manufacturing, workers rights etc. And that is great to see. It shows that they are starting to ask brands for the whole story behind the products they sell. And making informed decisions when choosing to buy something.
The more demand there is for products made with respect for our planet the quicker we will see the industry shift in that direction.
