Estonian sustainable packaging start-up Woola have developed an alternative solution to petroleum based plastic bubble wrap that makes use of unwanted waste sheep wool.
Woola takes the waste of one industry – leftover wool – and uses it to solve the waste problem of another – online shopping. Most online stores use plastic bubble wrap to ship fragile items, adding to the global plastic pollution problem. Plastic bubble wrap is made from polyethylene that takes more than 500 years to decompose in landfills or – in worse case – in nature.
Image - Woola, Bubble Wool
More than 100 billion parcels are shipped every year globally, commonly packed in bubble wrap. Bubble wrap degrades in 500-1000 years and is a large polluter of ocean life.
Sheep wool is a globally unused resource - more than 200 000 tonnes of wool is thrown away in Europe every year.
Woola has created a solution out of waste wool that replaces bubble wrap perfectly since wool is protective, lightweight and compostable.
Image - Woola
'Around 90% of all wool produced in Estonia goes to waste. That is around 153 tonnes of waste wool per year that gets burned or buried.' - Woola
Recently raising €450 000 in an investment round, Woola plan to use the funds to scale the production, grow the team, further develop the product, expand to new markets – and to step by step replace plastic bubble wrap with Woola.
Learn more about Woola HERE and follow their journey on instagram @woolapackaging
References 1/ www.woola.io
