Robert Plant: Change Your Name to ‘Robert Plant Wool’ to Help Sheep!
To show a whole lotta love to animals and the Earth ahead of Plant Wool Month in November, we’ve sent a letter to former Led Zeppelin frontman and environmental activist Robert Plant, asking him to temporarily change his name to “Robert Plant Wool.” The short-term name change would help celebrate cosy, plant-powered yarns – made from hemp, cotton, orange waste, and more – and urge everyone to shun the cruel and environmentally-destructive wool and cashmere industries.
What Is Plant Wool Month?
Plant Wool Month celebrates animal-free and plastic-free yarns that promote sustainable fashion while lowering greenhouse gas emissions. It also helps protect the animals with whom we share this precious planet.
Plant Wool Month will recognise the hard-working crop farmers, innovative textile makers, and pioneering designers who grow, spin, and work with these beautiful yarns to create knitwear, suits, and more, thereby weaving a kinder future for the planet and its animals.
Sheep Farming Is Killing the Planet
Sheep, as ruminant animals, are a major emitter of methane, a planet-warming greenhouse gas. They also use a huge amount of land: many of the vast green fields you see in the countryside were once forests that were destroyed to make way for sheep farms. Garments made of wool are often marketed as “natural”, but the shorn hair of sheep is routinely doused in chemicals to clean it.
All this, along with the industry’s energy use, and of course the animals’ waste, has led the Made-By Environmental Benchmark for Fibres to rank sheep’s wool as a “Class E” material – the worst possible category. In contrast, hemp – a plant wool used for thousands of years to make clothing – is ranked as a “Class A” material.
Sheep Farming Cruelty
PETA entities’ exposés of over 150 sheep’s wool-industry operations across four continents highlight the ethical reasons for conscious consumers to avoid sheep’s wool. Lambs endure routine mutilation, such as having their tails and testicles removed, usually without pain relief. Sheep are often kicked, beaten, and stomped on by workers in shearing sheds.
The industry often argues that sheep “need to be shorn”, but that’s only because they’ve been selectively bred to produce an unnatural and uncomfortable amount of wool. We have no right to breed sheep into existence to use them for this purpose. Choosing plant wool is the kindest option for both sheep and the planet.
Inspired to Try Plant Wool?
A growing number of designers are ditching sheep’s wool in favour of cruelty-free options. Here’s everything you need to know about materials you can choose instead:
While You Are Here…
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