What happened to European wool?

Understanding the global wool industry and the hidden footprint behind our clothes

When people think about wool, they often imagine green hills, happy sheep, soft sweaters, and perhaps an Australian shepherd leaning dramatically against a fence at sunset. Or a happy girl in a flowerdress having her own herd up in the mountains.

The reality of the global wool industry is far more complex.

Today, most wool processing happens through an enormous international system where wool travels thousands and thousands of kilometres before it becomes the jumper hanging in a European store. Australian wool may be shipped to China for scouring and spinning, sent to another country for knitting or weaving, and eventually sold back to consumers in Europe under the label of “premium natural fibre.”

Meanwhile, European wool, despite sheep grazing across Spain, France, the UK, Italy, and many other countries, is often treated as a waste product.

So how did we get here?

China became the new giant of fine wool

China and Australia dominate the global merino wool market because it produces very fine, consistent fibres at a massive scale. Over decades, the industry specialised heavily in export systems designed for international textile manufacturing.

Large-scale production creates efficiency. Huge volumes of wool can be sorted, auctioned, shipped, processed, and spun at prices that smaller European wool systems struggle to compete with.

But this efficiency also created an industry dependent on long international supply chains.

Today, much of the world’s wool travels enormous distances before becoming fabric or yarn. Raw wool is often exported unprocessed because many countries, including European ones, no longer have enough local washing, spinning, or textile infrastructure left.

And that is where one of the biggest issues begins.

Europe slowly lost its wool infrastructure

Europe once had strong local wool economies. Small mills, washing facilities, spinners, weavers, and knitters existed close to the farms where wool was produced.

But over time, cheap synthetic fibres, fast fashion, and global outsourcing pushed much of this infrastructure out of Europe. Processing wool locally became more expensive than importing industrially processed yarn from overseas.

As a result, many farmers today receive extremely low prices for their wool,  sometimes not even enough to cover shearing costs. In some areas, wool is burned, composted, buried, or simply discarded because there is no profitable market for it anymore. Crazy when you think about how many polyester sweaters are simultaneously being produced from fossil fuels.

The largest impact is often not where people think

When talking about sustainability, many people immediately focus on transport. And yes, shipping wool around the world absolutely has an environmental footprint.

A fleece may travel from Australia to Asia, then to Europe, then into distribution systems, packaging chains, warehouses, and finally into our wardrobes. Every step requires energy, infrastructure, and emissions.

But transport is only part of the story.

A major environmental impact in the textile industry comes from overproduction and short product lifespans.

We are producing huge quantities of clothing that are worn very little before being discarded. Low-quality garments made from blended synthetic materials are difficult to recycle and often end up in landfill or incineration after only a short use phase.

In other words: the problem is not only where fibres come from, but how badly we use them once they arrive.

What happens with our wool?

This is something we started asking ourselves seriously after moving to the North of Spain and living with our own sheep.

You begin to realise how valuable wool actually is. It grows every year using grass, water, sunlight, and time. It is renewable, repairable, biodegradable, insulating, breathable, and incredibly durable when treated properly.

And yet much of European wool has lost economic value simply because the systems around it disappeared.

At Oh My Pebbles, we spent years saving our own merino wool clip before finally being able to spin it professionally into cones. That process taught us how difficult local wool production has become, but also how meaningful it is to reconnect fibres, animals, makers, and users again.

Because maybe wool should not travel across half the planet before becoming a sweater. And clothing should not be designed to fall apart after one season either.

How do we leave our footprint in other countries?

This is perhaps the most uncomfortable question.

Fast fashion allows Europe and other wealthy regions to outsource not only production, but also environmental impact. Water use, chemical processing, labour pressure, pollution, and waste often happen far away from the people buying the final product.

We enjoy cheap clothing while other countries carry much of the manufacturing burden.

The same happens with textile waste. Huge volumes of discarded clothing are exported abroad, often under the label of “reuse” or “donation,” even when many items are no longer wearable.

The textile system became global, but responsibility did not.

So what is the alternative?

There is no perfect answer. Wool shipped locally is not automatically sustainable. Local production alone does not solve overconsumption. Recycling alone does not fix disposable design.

But perhaps the future lies in reconnecting value to materials again. Using fibres longer, and designing garments for durability and repair. We could try to support smaller textile systems where possible, so that we know where our fibers come from. Or following our discarded clothing to understand  what happens after we throw clothing away.

And maybe also sitting down once in a while to knit a sweater yourself.

Because when you spend weeks making one piece by hand, you suddenly understand exactly why clothing was never meant to be disposable in the first place.