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As I have mentioned before, what we wear plays as much of a part in sustainability as what we eat.  Along with leather, wool is a natural fiber that can be used to create earth-friendly, fashionable pieces that are long-lasting.

On this episode of the podcast, I am joined by Edzard Van Der Wyck, co-founder of Sheep, Inc. Since 2017, Sheep, Inc has been making “contemporary knitwear that has a positive impact on the world.” This mission is completed through solar powered manufacturing, carbon-negative raw materials, and well-cared for sheep. 

Join our conversation to learn:

• How Edzard got started in the fashion industry and how Sheep Inc came to be
• The problems with fast fashion 
• The process of finding sustainable materials
• Cashmere versus Merino wool
• The self-cleaning nature of Merino wool
• How Sheep Inc is able to have a carbon negative impact through optimizing their supply chain
• All about the adopt-a-sheep program
• How comparing wool to slavery or the holocaust is inaccurate and unjust
• Why sheep need to be shorn once a year
• How the wool is treated affects the feel
• The unique marketing approach of Sheep Inc and gender neutral quality of the products
• How you eventually pay the price for things in one way or another
• All of Sheep Inc’s Impact Program where 5% of revenue goes to regenerative projects
• How Covid has encouraged people to make more meaningful purchases

Resources:

• Heist Studios
• Sustainable Dish Episode 14: Director Michael Matheson Miller of Poverty Inc.
• The Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID)
• ZQRX program

Connect with Edzard:

Website: Sheep Inc.

Instagram: @sheepinc

LinkedIn: Edzard van der Wyck

Twitter: @evdwyck

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Episode Credits:

Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers, Lauren Manning, and James Connelly. Our producer is Meg Chatham, and our editor is Emily Soape. And of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Patreon supporters, and listeners.

A big thanks to Nakano Knives for their support of my work and the podcast. I’ve been using their knives for a couple of years now and I love them. They are beautiful, easy to hold, and a fantastic value. And just in time for the holidays, you can use my offer code DIANA for 10% off plus get a $25 voucher toward your next purchase. Who doesn’t love a new knife, right? 

This episode is sponsored by Paleovalley, my go-to, grab-and-go source for products that prioritize nutrient density in an industry that prioritizes everything else. Their epic lineup of products includes Organic Supergreens, 100% Grass-Fed Beef Sticks, Grass-Fed Organ Complex, 100% Grass-Fed Bone Broth Protein, and low-sugar snack bars. Visit their website here and enter the code SUSTAINABLEDISH for 15% off your first order.

Quotes:

“It’s kind of amazing how much has changed because now we do very quickly start to talk about fashion as one of the big problem industries when it comes to the environment.” – Edzard van der Wyck 

“We’ve just become, especially as consumers, used to this like, very quick, very unemotional kind of buying of clothing. It’s become quite flippant. I’ll just buy that and I’ll wear it. And that whole attitude also now has to change.” – Edzard van der Wyck 

“First of all, I have an issue with it from just a feminist perspective, that is, so much of the vegan movement is so based on beauty and exploiting women’s bodies, but also, it’s so naive to push away a really important fiber that humans have used for such a long time.” – Diana Rodgers, RD 

“People don’t want to feel that there’s this massive weight because they’re going through the purchasing experience but they want to have, to certain extent, optimism and fun and get the message not delivered with a sledgehammer but maybe delivered with a bit of a smile.” – Edzard van der Wyck

Transcript:

Diana Rodgers, RD  

Welcome back to the podcast everybody. I am so excited to have this next guest on I am wearing a sweater of his right now. Edzard is the founder or co founder I’m sorry, of Sheep Inc, which is a really exciting company that sells completely regenerative carbon neutral sweaters. And, and the colors are amazing. The feel is amazing. I’m so excited to have you on. Thank you so much for being here. 

Edzard Van Der Wyck   

Thank you. 

Diana Rodgers, RD  

So you’re in North London at the moment. But your your wool comes from New Zealand, and your website explains everything so well. I want to talk about all of that. But I also am just always curious to find out how people got into this. So what is your background? And how did you decide to start this company.

Edzard Van Der Wyck  

So my background is actually I set up another fashion brand or another product brand a couple of years ago called Heist Studios, which was actually a women’s underwear brand. And very, I suppose in many ways a very traditional ecommerce setup. But the real purpose of the brand was we were tackling, tackling the kind of the solely antiquated brand identity that takes place that often kind of exists in women’s underwear. So the kind of slightly simplistic depiction of sex and body and kind of femininity. So that was really my compass was my first foray into fashion. And before that, I’d worked in various capacities, kind of actually making film production commercials for also for a lot of big fashion brands. But that was my first company. And as I was growing the company, I started to become very aware of fashion’s impact on the environment and started to get more and more fascinated and interested in how you could I suppose bring like a step change to how fashion brands can behave. And that became I suppose my kind of my real obsession at one point, it was also mixed same time I had I had my first son was born. And obviously the the switchover in the brain starts to happen of like, how do you how do you have a positive generational impact? And how do you leave a positive planet for for my son. And so that really spurred me into action, basically. And so I left my last business, it’s still going but so that kind of spurred me into action to try and to try and set something up again, that would have actually have a positive impact. It wasn’t so much about having a neutralizing impact really have a positive impact, and both by the creation by the kind of the existence of the company, but also again, to kind of start this dialogue change around how fashion could be more positive for the environment. So that was around 2015, I suppose 2015 Sorry, I set up the business in 2017, I left the business, my last business and started looking into what would eventually become Sheep Inc. And I think, again, the real starting point for us was like how come people don’t talk about fashion when it comes to the environment? Now again, this is 2017. And it’s kind of amazing how much has changed since that since that time, because now we do very quickly start to talk about fashion as one of the big kind of problem industries when it comes to the environment. But even like three, four years ago, it wasn’t necessarily what people were really focused on when it came to… but you know, kind of environmental damage. I used to go to the pub and go and have drinks with friends and go like God, did you realize this is the impact of fashion. And everybody would always kind of look at me, but it’s kind of slightly surprised look, not realizing actually how big a problem the fashion industry is. And…

Diana Rodgers, RD  

Yeah. Can you talk about that really quickly? You know, I’ve I’ve had the director of Poverty Inc, on the podcast, and we had big conversations about this fast fashion, as far as you know, how much Americans in particular, you know, we’re donating our clothes, there’s receptacles at, like, every grocery store for us to just feel great about throwing out perfectly wonderful clothes. And then there’s this massive donation program going on mostly in African countries where people are just receiving all of the excess. And it’s it’s quite a problem. It’s something that not many people are aware that, you know, will you talk about that? And also, just the impact of fast fashion? I’ve written about it a little bit before.

Edzard Van Der Wyck  

Yeah, definitely. And I think that is, it’s amazing how much the kind of like, the attitude towards fashion has changed because of the emergence of fast fashion, right? I mean, the amount of times again, it always depends on what statistic source you pick, but, you know, the amount of times we wear clothing has gone down hugely over the last kind of decade or two, you know, we tend to wear things three, four or five times and then chuck them right. And, you know, it’s really crazy how how kind of our attitude towards buying something has really changed. And that, of course, has been made possible by the fact that fast fashion is so cheap to buy. So you go out, you spend a couple of pounds on something and go like, hey, it’s fine. It wasn’t that expensive. Therefore I can kind of wear it once, twice, three times and then throw it away. Now the real problem now is, of course the creation of the garment has an impact often with the fast fashion labels, of course, that it’s you know, kind of there’s also a huge social impact where people are not paid correct wages and that this of course in itself incredibly damaging outside of the huge environmental damage that happens there. And on top of that, the real problem there is that nearly all of the fast fashion items have synthetic fibers in it. So none of it is biodegradable, everything just ends up on a landfill either gets donated, but then even if it goes to Africa, it’s still at some point end up on the landfill. And it just goes, it just goes to total waste, you know, and you just end up with this huge textile, these these kind of this textile waste problem, again, depending on which which source you pick, but it’s only a hand, you know, it’s only a very tiny percentage of garments that are actually recycled. And you know, all of this contributes to this to this massive problem, right? That we’ve just become, especially as consumers, we’ve just become used to this like, very quick, very, very unemotional, almost right, this kind of buying of clothing. It’s some become some quite flippant. I’ll just buy that and I’ll wear it. And that whole attitude also now has to change. Fast fashion is, again, it’s hugely responsible for so much damage to the planet. And it’s not only through its own impact that it’s actually again, it’s also it’s how it’s changed our mindset of buying, right. And that is a huge thing that we also wanted to address. And so you know, taking all those things into account, we actually worked with a think tank in Copenhagen called the CIID, the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design to really do in depth market analysis. Why actually why people are not buying more sustainably. And the most interesting thing that came out of it was sounds very simple. But it’s like, people don’t ask questions they don’t… they’re not conditioned to ask questions. When it comes to fashion, you go into a shop, you put something on you like it, you can afford it, you pay for it, and you walk out. There’s not a single moment where you actually interrogate? You know, I wonder who made this again? What is the CO2 impacts? Like? What is the social impact, with simply not conditioned to ask that question? And the reason for that is because the fashion industry has been such an opaque industry for so long as that just, we wouldn’t think that we would get an answer. Right. So we therefore we don’t ask the question. So again, that was the key thing that we really wanted to focus on is like, how do we get people to start thinking about the journey? How do you have a positive impact as a business? How do you create garments that lasts a long time? How do you change the mentality around buying? But how do you very importantly, how do you get people to start thinking about the journey that sits behind it? Again, transparency is a big buzzword in this space, right to kind of address that, but I don’t think transparency is the answer. Transparency is just like, it is it’s like slowly but surely, you’re adding visibility, but that’s not getting the customer change thing to happen. Because we don’t know to ask the question, therefore, we don’t kind of expect transparency. Therefore, even brands that have transparency in them, it’s kind of it’s a bit of a nice to have thing, you’re not addressing the core problem, which is how do you get people to think about the story buying the things that they buy? So anyway, that’s those were all the things that were kind of floating around, but then eventually became Sheep Inc. And to start with, I suppose we wanted to create kind of, first of all, address this thing of like, what is the right product to sell? And how do you create it? And how do you create it in a positive manner and had you also make sure that it’s a product that is long lasting, and knitwear and we launched with only a crewneck very quickly became like, the most interesting product for us to focus on because it’s because it’s such a fashion staple, you know, I’ve inherited sweaters off my dad, right? So it is something that you can have in your wardrobe for such a long time, it doesn’t have this kind of, you know, it’s not as kind of fashion style season sensitive, right? So if you could really good crewneck sweater really good knitwear, it is something you can have for a very, very long time.

Diana Rodgers, RD  

Yeah and especially in the UK, you can wear year round.

Edzard Van Der Wyck  

Non-existent summers. So you know, that that became like a real focal point for us. And then we started to look at, like, what is the right material to make? Make it out of? And I think that question, I think is really important, because what material to make it out of consists of, I suppose a couple of components, right? It’s like, how do you make sure that it’s as wearables possible because you can make something out of pineapple waste, but if the person if it’s not gonna be comfortable for the person to wear, you’re still contributing to the same problem that people just simply are not going to want to wear it as much and therefore they’re going to buy more stuff right? So the whole point is like how do you actually get the right material for the use of the product and we looked at a lot of different types of materials and we really did go as far as kind of looking at some of the new kind of the new cutting edge materials like using food waste, etc. But the material we very quickly came to which of the two materials we very quickly came to were cashmere and Merino wool. Cashmere we took a long hard look at because it’s obviously very high quality feels great against the against skin, etc. A real problem with cashmere is in its sustainable credentials. It’s very very hard to get good, sustainable, sustainable cashmere especially what’s happening such a high worldwide demand for cashmere like huge areas of Mongolia currently just trampled over with cashmere goats and it’s causing huge amounts of environmental damage. Yeah, Merino

Diana Rodgers, RD   

Yeah and I think there’s…oh, sorry to interrupt you. I just you know, I I love cashmere and I have I have a few like really nice pieces, but I I feel like it’s so there’s so much cheap cashmere out there that maybe consumers, you know, if they see something that’s higher priced, why buy it where your sweaters are so unique? There’s not a lot of like, cheap Merino, or maybe there is but I don’t see it as much as cashmere.

Edzard Van Der Wyck  

As cheap cashmere. Yeah. But I mean, I think they’re important. There is cheap Merino. And then it comes down to the factors. The most important question is like, where do you source it from right? But Merino wool became for us, first of all, the kind of really interesting material because it has actually to be treated in the right way. It’s exactly a soft, same softness as cashmere, but actually it has far more, it has far better technical qualities. So it’s far better at temperature regulating than cashmere. It wicks away moisture, so you can kind of basically can sweat into it, it doesn’t really retain any moisture, the forces it to retain any of the odor, and you literally don’t need to wash it. I’m not saying this is kind of like trying to sell my product. My sweaters that I’ve had now over two years samples even from very early on, I’ve never washed because they just simply don’t need to be washed. And you know, that’s a huge thing about Merino wool is just very, very good at self cleansing. So again, you don’t contribute to the kind of like the problem after buying it’s where again, you’re washing stuff the whole time, right. And that again contributes to more environmental damage. So as you know, kind of as a material go it was it was really amazing. But you have this colossal problem when it comes to Merino wool was it comes from a sheep, right? Sheep is a methane producing animal. Livestock is of course one of the big contributors to the climate crisis. So how do you actually justify, could you justify that was really our starting point. We were like, We love this material. But can you justify it and at that point, it became for my my co founder, Michael and myself, it became a kind of deep dive into, basically into regenerative farming and into kind of like figuring out that whole side of things and going like ah, you know, actually there is a way of having Merino wool to do kind of Merino wool farming basically, and having sheep stations that are run in a way that has a positive environmental impact. And so what we do is we work with a handful of New Zealand sheep stations, and each of them has been like very carefully selected. We work first of all, with ZQRX credited sheep stations, which is an accreditation has very high animal welfare standards, but also very high kind of biodiversity standards. You know, only worldwide about 1% of the sheep stations around the world and Merino wool farms, not even Merino wool, but just sheep stations in general would be able to qualify for it, because it’s got very stringent kind of criteria, basically to be ZQRX certified. And we went to them and said, Okay, this is great, you know, you have these high standards, but what’s the 1% of your 1%, you know, who liked the best people in your mix? And we very quickly identified this kind of these handful of sheep sheep stations within New Zealand that were really once again at the kind of like the cutting edge of the regenerative farming movement, which is definitely gathering a lot of steam in New Zealand. And we worked with them and figured out a way basically to, to use their wool. And the great thing about it is that through, and we’ve done full third party audits on this, but through very careful manufacturing methods. So we source our wool from the regenerative from regenerative farms, we then it gets spun in Italy, everything runs on renewable energy. And then we actually manufacture in Portugal, everything is solar powered. And we make our sweaters on these machines, which are 3D whole garment machines that produce no waste. So again, there’s no kind of pattern cutting or anything, when you get in textile waste, nothing, none of that happens. And again, the run on solar power, and then we send everything from logistics facility here in the UK, that is also totally solar powered, and is one of the the only carbon neutral warehouse here in the UK. And by having that supply chain set up. And again, because we’re a company, we have a single range of products, we can really optimize basically a supply chain within an inch of its life quality and for sustainability reasons. By having that setup, we’re able to have a naturally carbon negative impact with our supply chain. So without offsetting, and we actually launched having not had the full kind of LCA, that the lifecycle assessment done through the farm stage, because that’s a very complex thing to do. Because you have to take soil analysis into account, you know, all of this, but you know, it’s a real kind of deep dive basically into the historical data of the farm, etc. You know, the topography with tech satellite imagery to do the whole that whole thing climate into account climate over the last years, soil erosion, etc. But we ran a long process there, of course, about a year and a half, to kind of really figure out what is the actual carbon footprint at the raw material stage. And in May we were, again, all of this is third party. It’s not none of it. None of this is kind of our internal LCA that’s really done by an external party, because we obviously want to be able to have kind of show that we’re not there’s no partiality there. We’re able to have a naturally carbon negative, we have a naturally carbon negative supply chain. So which is around for our hoodie that we’re both wearing, and it’s around minus it’s around minus 6.8 kilograms of CO2 is sequestered, naturally sequestered in the supply chain. And the one big question people always ask us is, hold on, so you go from New Zealand to Italy to Portugal to the UK, there’s a lot of transport there involved. And to just very quickly flag that. One is, if everything travels by ship, actually transport is a very, it’s not as big a problem shipping is a huge problem. But actually, the the kind of like the percentage of CO2 emissions that sit in our supply chain due to transport is very, very small.

Diana Rodgers, RD  

And there was a study that was done on a farm here in the US that showed a negative impact of burgers, you know, of meat from from this one farm. And I actually, when I spun the data out to the public said, Okay, well, this actually means for every Impossible Burger or Beyond Burger, you have to actually eat one of these real burgers to offset your impact from eating these ultra processed burgers. I wonder if you’ve ever calculated out like the average sweater or the average even wool sweater and you know, how many of your sweaters you might need to own to mitigate your impact?

Edzard Van Der Wyck  

Yeah, I mean, so it’s actually it’s pretty high. I mean, it’s like for wool, because, you know, it’s around 25 kilograms of CO2 for kind of for a standard sweater, right? If the natural sequestration is not happening, that’s just the wool state. So I mean, it’s kind of like 25 kilograms plus, basically, then, for instance, for our hoodie, we’re at minus 6.85. For a cardigan, we’re actually at minus 10 kilograms, to move slightly over that. So yeah, there’s a big, there’s obviously a big difference between the two.

Diana Rodgers, RD  

And we talk a little bit about typical grazing with sheep can be quite devastating on the landscape. And actually, the first time I learned about that was when I was an art student, a long time ago, watching a documentary about Andy Goldsworthy, where he was talking about his sculptures in the landscape and how sheep have destroyed the UK, the grazing of the sheep, I mean, and when I did have my opportunity to go to New Zealand, I was driving around and everyone was saying, Oh, my gosh, look at how green this is, look at how beautiful it is. And the sheep, you know, it’s no impact. And I said, Oh, my gosh, but the grass is like, a quarter of an inch high. They have, I did not see a lot of regenerative grazing techniques, I saw a lot of continuous grazing, where the sheep are just, you know, out when I went to Iceland I saw the same thing. Iceland is also now trying to the government’s trying to pull sheep off the land, because they’re so devastating when they could actually just improve the management of the sheep. So we talked briefly, just for folks who aren’t familiar, the difference. 

Edzard Van Der Wyck  

I mean, yeah, definitely. So rotational grazing is when it kind of comes down to I mean, again, it comes to having regenerative, the right kind of flora and fauna mix, basically on your property. So they have regenerative pastures where they have all types of different different flora on it. So they make sure that actually the sequestration is that are happening in various kinds of parts of the of the sheep station, but also the most important bit is to point is rotational grazing, right, you just move the sheep around. Now, the benefit, obviously, of New Zealand is that it’s a humongous, humongous area for the sheep to cover, you know, there’s I mean, there really are on these vast, vast, vast properties. So it’s kind of more straightforward, I suppose for, you know, kind of like for sheep to move around. But still, there has to be the will that actually want to move. And so what the owners of the station do is they do just move them around, and they really let kind of pastures rest, which allows the soil to recover, it allows them to grass grow the roots to grow. And that just allows some more carbon sequestration, you know, and that, that is just a key part of it. It’s just this rotational grazing techniques, and, you know, and all these techniques can, you know, they’re not that complicated to kind of to apply, you know, so it just really is what again, where there’s a will there’s a way in that case,

Diana Rodgers, RD  

So what you’re saying is, just because something is wool does not necessarily mean I mean, certainly it would I still think wool period is better than a plastic, one of these like fleecy plastic sweaters that releases microplastics into the environment that you see everybody wearing, especially all over the US. You see people with these, like outdoorsy, you know, there’s there’s a few brands that I could name that I won’t but you know, it’s these brands that tout themselves as environmental outdoorsy, ecologically sustainable, but they’re selling massive amounts of these plastic fleece sweaters.

Edzard Van Der Wyck  

Which are huge, again, hugely problematic and wool is you know, you wool is 100% biodegradable. It leaves no waste and but again, you have you do have to address the sheep problem. You know, you have to make sure that you don’t sit in a traditional kind of like farming structure in a more industrial farming structure, which is problematic. It’s problematic from animal welfare point of view, and it’s problematic from a CO2 impact point of view. But that was also the big piece that it’s kind of come… especially kind of come full circle back to this idea of bringing people back in touch as we were kind of like, Okay, listen, we’ve got this great product now. And people really love, love the knits that we produce. And we have figured out this whole kind of supply chain piece, but like just regurgitating this information to the customers is not going to be incredibly compelling, like people again, not that interested. So how do you actually bring a fun and kind of like emotional touch points, this whole thing. So we thought, well, listen, if we’re going to be selling Merino wool sweaters, why not have an adopt-a-sheep on the same farm that their sweaters are from. So basically, what happens is every single sweater comes with a little tag in the hem, and when you get it, you scan it with your phone, and then you put in your details to see the whole history of the garment. We also then allocate your sheep on the farm, that sweater came from the bullpen from and you can get information on it. And it’s like it’s a real sheep, like we plug into a database, put it in real sheep information. And obviously, they’re constantly checking the sheep on how it’s doing. So all that information kind of gets passed through to the customer. And that for us is kind of like obviously, it’s a fun thing to talk about, you know, it’s okay, I got this sheep came with the sweater, but I think it does do something kind of important, which is cast your mind back to the genesis of the garment. Right? And you start to go yeah, this did actually start with a sheep. And I think that’s what’s kind of again, that’s always what’s that that emotional, storytelling bit is kind of the bit that’s missing, right? When when we think about transparency. It’s like you have to actually engage with the story. So this idea of kind of owning a sheep, it’s fun, and you can kind of like to create a story around it. But it also does this thing of making you kind of think back the journey that the garment you’ve worn has created. And you know, our hope is therefore that pick up a pair of socks next time and you also gotta go, come on let me just kind of think, where did this start? What kind of journey is it taken before it got here into into my hands? And that was a big that was also kind of like the I suppose the kind of the fun, the fun part of the brand, but again, had this kind of, you know, hopefully this kind of like because bigger bigger effects, I would say.

Diana Rodgers, RD  

And then you also have these each of the sweaters for folks who are watching, you know, I can I can hold this up to the camera. Yeah, show it this. Are they all? Are they all this yellow color on all the sweaters?

Edzard Van Der Wyck  

We do contract contrast. Those colors, some of the same ones. The tags themselves made it kind of a bio, this thing called Eco packs, which is made from Castor beans. It’s a carbon neutrally produced.

Diana Rodgers, RD  

Of course it is. So yes, yeah. So I so I tapped my phone to this. And will you explain to folks they can actually trace? It’s like a blockchain sweater.

Edzard Van Der Wyck  

Yeah, exactly. So we haven’t done blockchain enabled. So we set up for the blockchain, we haven’t enabled yet again, because of the environmental impact will be held all the data, all our supplies sits on a kind of proprietary supply chain tech solution that we built, and they feed in the data. So you know exactly when the wool has being shorn, you know, when the wool has been dyed. You can see when it’s been hand finished, we also every single, small amount of waste there is we used to make this thing called a smit mark that sits on the back of the sweater. And that like is basically smit marks put on sheep so that farmers can identify them, they kind of spray paint them, right. And then you know, okay, that blue sheep over there, that’s one of my flock and we put them every single sweater we kind of identify in that way. And you can see again, on the tag, you can see exactly the name of the person who had finished it that person so signs or certificate get when you get the sweater. And so this whole thing of again, making this information more accessible, but also again, adding this kind of fun element where you get used to scan the tag and it also gives you a GPS location of your sheep right so you can see exactly where it’s hanging out. It’s all meant to be this kind of immediately accessible information

Diana Rodgers, RD  

I have so many questions I want to talk about like how sheep are shorn and the animal welfare impact of that but I also want to ask you because I’ve I’ve worked with food producers to try to… right now I’m trying to bring influencers in the nutrition community and health community onto farms and teach show them regenerative grazing and talk to them about nutritional importance of animal source foods worldwide to our food system to people who don’t have the privilege of pushing away nutrient dense food like meat. Yeah. Have you had any luck bringing fashion influencers? Or have you thought about bringing fashion influencers to see the sheep to talk about it to where you know not only just send them a sweater maybe but you know like I mentioned right before we got on I saw Greta Thunberg wearing a wool sweater and I thought that was really great because she talks so much about how she doesn’t eat meat. And that’s her statement and of course you and I know there’s so much more complexity to just not eating meat or I won’t wear wool and you see Alicia Silverstone is it is that her name? She’s like a… I think that’s her name. But there was a there was a famous ad campaign that she did here in the US. 

Edzard Van Der Wyck   

PETA, right? 

Diana Rodgers, RD  

Yes, for PETA, where she said I would rather be naked than wear wool.  First of all, I have an issue with that it from just a feminist perspective, that is, so much of the vegan movement is so based on beauty and exploiting women’s bodies, but but also, it’s so naive to push away a really important fiber that humans have used for such a long time. And certainly there are problems, but you’re definitely not going to make it any better by wearing plastic fibers.

Edzard Van Der Wyck  

Listen to it totally. And I think it’s, you know, to your point, there’s, like, there’s a massive nuance there, right. It’s important there’s a dialogue there. I think that’s the most important bit. And we do tend to see, unfortunately, like, there’s the vegan community who are quite open to having a conversation about it. And then you have the more militant, unfortunately, there’s no conversation to be had there, right. This is like, you guys exploit animals, and they equate it to slavery, which I also find kind of like also tiny bit, you know, kind of…

Diana Rodgers, RD  

Or the holocaust.

Edzard Van Der Wyck   

Yeah or the holocaust and you kind of go, Okay, you guys are taking it into into place, I think is totally on, I’m not only uncalled for, but it’s totally unjust. Right? Right, I cannot compare the two things. And I think that’s where it becomes quite kind of, you know, it is complex to try and get that message message across, I think I do understand it, I am sympathetic to the majority of it, where I’m like, it is of course true that the majority of meats, the majority of wool doesn’t come from a good source, right? It is from farms that are maybe more industrialized, in their setup, have a huge CO2 impact. They don’t treat the animals as well, during the sheering process. We again, have a very carefully audited process whenever whenever it’s sheering. Anything happens to you know, it’s one of the animals, first of all, of course, fix the animal. But secondly, that sheerer will never work on that farm again. You know, and the amount of kind of accidents that happen is totally minimal, right. And, but the importance there is to be able to have this this nuance, you know, and not to just immediately go in with the mindset of everything is all animal products are evil. Now, the reality, of course, 95% of products are problematic. The wool is problematic, the meat is problematic. But there are hopefully, brands like us, who are trying to slightly change the dialogue there and show that, again, that you can have for instance, a wool product that is then again, had does have a positive impact. So we try to always engage with conversations around it, because it’s of course, important. Unfortunately, often the door slammed in our face, because people very much made up their mind that any type of animal product is exploitation no matter what. But we do try to kind of have these conversations, I think the important thing also to flag is that if you don’t sheer the sheep, it becomes incredibly uncomfortable for it. No man has kind of I mean, rightly or wrongly, man has now, genetically changed the sheep…

Diana Rodgers, RD   

The sheep are not the same as wild sheep, they’re, they’re bred to grow a lot of wool.

Edzard Van Der Wyck   

To grow wool. And if you don’t sheer them once a year, you know, again, the reality is the reason…, the reason we source Merino wool, specifically from from New Zealand, the reason the quality is so good, is because New Zealand has this very varied climate, right, there’s incredibly cold winters and has very hot summers. So the wool adapts to that very quickly, so it kind of understands how to temperature regulate the sheep itself. But if you don’t sheer the sheep, then I mean, in the summertime, it just is really uncomfortable, right? And the wool starts to mat and that starts to, you know, kind of get dirty, etc. And just after a while the sheep is just incredibly uncomfortable. And so you just have to therefore, sheer it to make it you know, to kind of give it a better life, basically. 

Diana Rodgers, RD   

And also, it’s healthier for the babies too, because when you have a lot of dirty wool hanging down when the baby goes to nurse, and the wool was covered in Yeah, yeah, the baby is much more, the lamb is more susceptible to getting an infection from the parasites, or whatever.

Edzard Van Der Wyck  

You know, and there’s some practices that again, you know, the also, once again, I think that a lot of the animal rights groups flagged as problematic, and very rightly so one of them is mulesing, which is something that is applied to sheep, where again, if they defecate, then what tends to happen is that it gets stuck in there, it gets stuck in there fur, and then it gets infected. And then what happens then that flies come in to eat it and then it creates wounds, and then it gets infected. And then the sheep either dies or suffers. So what they used to do, and they still do in the majority of sheep stations around the world is that they actually slice off the skin in the rear of the sheep when they’re very young. And then no wool can grow that which yes, it fixes the flystrike problem, but have you know, it’s horrific for the animal, right. And so we have totally not… all our wool is nonmulesed, which means that it’s been basically there’s been a way that to breed the sheep that they don’t need to go through that process. So there’s no fly strike risk, and they don’t need to have this practice supplied to them. And but that’s something else, obviously, that quite rightly like a lot of animal welfare agencies are kind of up in arms about. And then also one of the reasons that they flag wool has been such problematic material. But again, you can get now a lot of nonmulesed wool. And in fact, in New Zealand, it’s now totally illegal to do any type of mulesing. Unfortunately, Australia is still legal, but in New Zealand, it’s totally illegal.

Diana Rodgers, RD  

Huh, that’s interesting. I’ve raised sheep in the past, just for meat, which is a completely they were a completely different breed. The wool… they do produce wool, and we do sheer them. But they it was a very coarse wool that, you know, we would just give to knitters to make it was a stretchable that they would make, you know, socks and mittens out of. But one person did make me a sweater, which was amazing. And it was all dyed with herbs and weeds locally. I mean, the sweater was incredible. It’s itchy is most uncomfortable thing. Yeah, it’s really hard to wear. And and I wish I could, but a lot of people have this perception that wool is really uncomfortable. And I’ve heard also, and I don’t know that much about fashion. So so let me know. But I’ve heard part of the reason why wool is uncomfortable is also how its treated after it’s shorn, is that correct? There’s like chemicals or…

Edzard Van Der Wyck  

Yeah, there were there’s a couple of reasons, first of all, is the fineness of the micron. So that’s really important. We use a very fine micron, which is about four times finer than the human hair. So it’s like a really, really thin, it’s really, really thin. And that’s the very, that is a special breed of Merino wool. So you have strong wool, like you’re talking about, it’s like 30-35 microns, and ours is about 19 and a half. So that makes a massive difference at the kind of sheep stage basically, is to have that fine micron. And but then after that, definitely the way it’s treated is key. And so we work with a very specialized yarn mill that have created this great treatment for the wool that doesn’t use any chlorine, which is traditionally used in all wool treatments. It’s cleaned of all the kind of like of all the dirt and then totally,

Diana Rodgers, RD  

Because it is quite dirty when you when you shear a sheep it is does not come off white. 

Edzard Van Der Wyck  

No. Definitely doesn’t. That image of a fluffy white sheet. Yeah, definitely. That’s movie movie time, not reality, they get pretty dirty pretty quickly. Yeah. So yeah, so you have this, you have this process where they take it out. It’s called greasy wool when it comes to fleece comes off the sheep. And then it comes off literally as kind of like one piece, you know, one piece of fleece and then it goes through a kind of like a treatment process where all the dirt gets taken out. And it loses about 30% of its weight just down to the just because of the kind of like the dirt that sits in it, which again, shows how heavy these things are for sheep if you don’t sheer them. And so that process, then then then it gets spun into wool. And again, our treatment is totally chlorine free. It’s called an Eternity X Care treatment. And it’s prior to treatment by a yarn mill. And that also ensures both technical properties are better for wool that kind of improves the performance of temperature regulating beards, etc. And on top of that, it also just makes it a lot softer. So that’s why our sweaters do feel very soft.

Diana Rodgers, RD  

It’s so soft. And and I do also, you know, before we go, I want to make sure we talk briefly also about how cool your marketing is the gender neutral colors that you use the sizing. It was really striking to me, I really noticed it and I really appreciated it. So will you just kind of talk about it’s almost an American Apparel type angle that you’re taking, but much more thoughtful.

Edzard Van Der Wyck   

Yeah, so funnily enough, the gender neutrality, but we were totally gender neutral in our products, we’ve actually just split out our website into bondad. And into men’s women’s just so that people could get a better reading of what product would look like. 

Diana Rodgers, RD  

It was a little confusing for me initially, but then what went back today and saw the men’s and women’s but it’s still the same as far as colors

Edzard Van Der Wyck    

So exactly the same. Because we just got a lot of feedback for people wanted to see it.

Diana Rodgers, RD  

It was It felt confusing the first time. Yeah, yeah. 

Edzard Van Der Wyck   

But it is, it is totally it is a total gender, gender neutral product. And that was also important for us. You know, it’s like, that’s just when it wears is a great product, just like it is something that you can wear, you can you know, Daughter, your daughter can take it over, you know, there’s no, there’s no,

Diana Rodgers, RD  

My daughter and son have both stolen the one I’m wearing now, so….

Edzard Van Der Wyck  

They’re surfers, they’re surfers, right? We’ve got a couple of surfers on the team and they love wearing the hoodie after a surf session. But yeah, that was also kind of important for us. And I think also that idea of like the brand and the marketing was a lot of figuring out how to deliver the sustainability message without being too kind of like preachy, right? Because I think that’s another thing that’s very off putting people is that they don’t want to they don’t want to be preached about sustainability. They don’t want to feel that there’s this kind of massive weight because they’re kind of like going through purchasing experience but they want to have to certain extent it is kind of like optimism and fun and get the kind of like the message not delivered with a sledgehammer but maybe delivered with a bit of a with a bit of a smile. So I think that was totally for For us very important as we’ve got that right tone of voice to make it very digestible for the people. But my kind of like the equivalence I was drawn to is like getting your news source from Trevor Noah or getting it from, you know, kind of like, whoever whoever your late night host poison is, but kind of like getting that information across in a way that you kind of you’re still absorbing news, but you’re also getting this kind of like entertainment value, it kind of comes with it. And, but the important thing is, you are still getting substance coming out of it. And that’s very much what we wanted to as well as we wanted to, you know, listen to you adopt a sheet with a sweater, we couldn’t be too serious. So that that, again, was very important for us to get that kind of brand tone in it and get that right.

Diana Rodgers, RD   

These are not as cheap, as you might find, you know, at some discount store, but they’re also something that’s going to last absolutely forever. They’re not super expensive, totally worth it, especially when you consider you’re not going to have to wash it, you’re or maybe not as often if you if you do decide to wash it, it’s something that your entire family can steal from you. So that’s good. So your daughter and son will want to wear the same exact one. And just I think we all and I know my listeners are very much believe in less is more. And it’s about quality, not quantity. And I think we really need to in the, in the clothing world, talk about that a lot more. And I just am so in love with your company. I just think it’s really fantastic.

Edzard Van Der Wyck  

And I think the important thing that you really talk about, we also offer a generational guarantee to any fixing mishap and you send it back to us. And we’ll we’ll kind of take care of it. But I think that’s the other big thing that needs to change is the kind of the prism through which we look at pricing, right? And yes, first fashion is cheap. But that doesn’t mean that there’s not going to be a huge not only environmental cost, but financial costs down the road, right. And if you look at the impact that some of these industries are going to have, like, at the end of that it’s going to fall on the tax dollar, right? It’s like, you know, it’s going to be come down to tax, like, we are going to be paying for this somehow or another down the line. And it’s the same thing in the US, right, where there’s always this equation of like the Green New Deal being so expensive. And it’s like, yeah, but if you look at the consequences of not doing a Green New Deal type thing is going to be vastly financially outweigh anything that the Green New Deal would cost. And I think that goes the same for fashion, right? It’s like, yes, you can pick up the sweater for 10 pounds, or, you know, 20 bucks if you really want to, but the damage that that is doing is going to have such long time is such a long term kind of repercussions that at the end of the day, at some point also going to have huge financial repercussions for the world. Right? 

Diana Rodgers, RD  

Hmm. And I also think just you know, as somebody who has to make a lot of decisions, I know like Barack Obama, wears the same thing every day, you know, but it’s also just really nice to just to put on the same, same or similar outfit, you know. Like I tend to my sister and I were joking one time that we we kind of have that cartoon character kind of thing going on where like, it’s just the same outfit, like all the time, because just easier. And actually environmentally, it’s better right to wear the same clothes as many times you can before you wash them. So I could see just having a couple different colors of this. And that’s my winter, you know, uniform. And that’s it.

Edzard Van Der Wyck    

It has, it’s funny, but it has actually, again, obviously I wear, I  only wear my products. But it does make it very simple in the morning. One color one color of the day, there’s not a huge amount of mental Yeah, mental effort.

Diana Rodgers, RD   

And again, the colors as somebody who really appreciates art and color. They’re really like beautifully saturated and really special colors that that work, I think in so many ways, and you could just wear black jeans are you know, anyway, so I encourage everybody I know that sounds like an ad but I just tend to gush, when I really like a company. So we’re going to be doing a giveaway, we’re going to be you know, we’ll have a special link on the podcast page to get your sweater and folks can also a portion of those sales goes back to regenerative agriculture projects.

Edzard Van Der Wyck  

Yeah, so we we dedicate, we dedicate about 5% of our revenue to biodiversity projects, part of that goes to the farm and part of that goes to projects around the world. So yeah, that’s another big statement piece that we wanted to put out there was like actually, you know, even if small brands like us can afford to or not afford to but have decided that we’re going to put 5% of our revenue into these projects. Like we really want bigger brands to follow suit.

Diana Rodgers, RD  

Yeah, and I like how you corrected yourself on afford to because I think we you know a lot of people that come to me saying they can’t afford to eat better or whatever. But then they’ve got the latest iPhone, they’ve got the most up to date, you know, MacBook computer and they just got back from a luxury vacation and I think it really just… I think that, I wonder if COVID has done as well for you as it has for my other friends who produce good meat or a few other people who make meaningful things. Because I think COVID really put people in check as far as like, maybe even changing their career to doing something more meaningful. You know, I think people are really starting to take a step back and relax with their consumerism and be more thoughtful with their purchases.

Edzard Van Der Wyck   

Yeah, and definitely. And I hope the post COVID consumer is the new consumer, that it’s not a blip, right? It’s my only, my only concern. Here in the UK, it was crazy property prices have gone up by 30% in the countryside, you know, some people have just decided that no more city living, I want to be in nature. And so there has been this whole kind of like this, this mind shift change of like, what’s important. And, you know, again, people are, to your point, people becoming far more aware of what they put on their bodies, into their bodies, you know, they start to really think about it and what’s important, I hope is going to be permanent, you know, there have really been a couple of warning signs that as much as it was like, hey, great, there’s not as much CO2, you know, CO2 emissions were massively down and then went straight back up again, like as soon as everything opened up, but I hope there’s at least this awareness piece, it’s now starting to, to kind of like become more prevalent, I think, than it ever has been. But you know, it’s come back full circle, I started thinking about Sheep Inc in 2017. Nobody was talking about fashions impact on the environment, launched in 2019 started to become a bit more of a conversation. And now suddenly, everything is, you know, fashion is hugely part of part of the kind of like, what does a sustainable world look like conversation and that for me is very encouraging how quickly that narrative has changed. You know, obviously it’s thanks to people like Greta Thunberg initially, they really see that that kind of obviously that that that movement, but I think also now it is this kind of COVID is kind of helped. But you know what I mean by that, you know, I think people are starting to hopefully change and again time is running out right? Then you got really got a couple of years now to meet some pretty aggressive targets. It’s time to mess around is no longer that.

Diana Rodgers, RD  

Oh, well, I’m so glad the sponsored ad came up on my Instagram feed and I discovered you Good job, good job to marketing team for that. Yeah. And and I’ll be wearing I’ll be wearing this to conferences. I’ll be I’ll have a megaphone out for your company. I just really think it’s fantastic. So let people know where they can find you on Instagram.

Edzard Van Der Wyck  

Instagram. Yeah, so Sheep Inc is our Instagram handle. And sheep inc.com is, so sheep inc .com is is our website. So and we’re only available through that. So unfortunately not retail stores yet only online.

Diana Rodgers, RD  

All right. Well, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it and I wish that this company Thank you. 

Edzard Van Der Wyck    

Thank you