It was sad to see Gravedodger’s comment on his post about State Housing saving money by rejecting wool carpets in favour of synthetic ones:
One of life’s great mysteries lies in the rejection of wool by hoards who on their days off can be seen protesting carbon incorporation in progress to a better world while wearing clothes, footwear, and other of life’s accoutrements made from the very hydrocarbons they are protesting against.
Because I haven’t been involved in dry-stock farming since I was a teenager I was only vaguely aware of the problems of the wool industry, and even then mainly due to Homepaddock’s occasional bits of news about some new intitiative or other to rescue the industry in NZ, with this one, Hope For Wool, published earlier this year being a good example.
But it really struck home in 2020-21 when I was working for an Ag-Contractor and ran into a Welsh girl on a working holiday here, who told me of the farmers in her world dumping wool into gullies because they literally could not give it away. Astounded by this I checked around and found that it was often happening here in NZ as well.
So much for the Back To Nature movement starting in the late 1960’s, as GD alluded to in his post.
I’ll let the great Billy Bob Thornton provide his take it on it, courtesy of a new TV series streaming on Paramount+:
Do you have any idea how much diesel they have to burn to mix that much concrete? Or make that steel and haul this shit out here and put it together with a 450-foot crane? Do you want to guess how much oil it takes to lubricate that fuckin’ thing? Or winterize it? In its 20-year lifespan, it won’t offset the carbon footprint of making it. And don’t get me started on solar panels and the lithium in your Telsa battery.
No Minister 
We have used wool twice as our ceiling insulation. A guy down Hawkes Bay washes and processes it into small wooly balls that can be pumped with air into a fat hose and ‘hosed’ into every cavity of the ceiling, right into the eaves. Moisture resistant, vermin proof, fire resistant, improved acoustics (reduces road noise), no allergy issues and maintains the loft.
Unnecessarily fully tested by BRANZ and all those type of outfits.
APCO WOOL SERVICES. SH2 Otane. No website, drop Phil a line.
Wool is a versatile fibre, useful in many ways, harder than steel, flexible. It’s natural oil is great for lubricating drive belts and slower-running bearings and metal to metal joints. The oil has also been used widely to help keep many of the world’s beauties from looking like humans and instead looking like painted harridans from beyond the black stump.
BUT
easycare it ain’t.
Wool needs to be able to return to it’s natural 17% moisture content fairly quickly or it becomes fragile (rot when too wet, brittle when too dry) which means people using it also need to think.
In my opinion therein lies the problem.
Well over 30 years ago the only outfit that would buy NZ wool off meat-producing sheep (crossbreds and stronger Ocker-style halfbreds) was Nepal and I’m guessing Nepal is now full up with woolen blankets, shawls, and outer-clothing by now.
Conversely Merino and other fine-wool sheep tend to need harsh living conditions to produce that fine wool and that often produces fairly average meat.
Having dealt with the odd Merino and halfbred sheep, this writer would feed every one of the bastards to the dogs – live.
I digress.
The only other market was the craft-type people and they often wanted specialty wool (Lincoln, Southdown etc. or black crap).
Oil-produced fibres can be made to order, don’t take a season to produce, are not sworn at with passion by scourmen and pressers and need virtually no care beyond a washing machine.
Oil-produced fibres are also cheap (and nasty) so fit most greenie-type reds perfectly.