Wool comes back as the cool new packing material

The Sunday Times
March 22, 2009
Polystyrene will become a thing of the past if the founder of Woolcool has her way
Andrew Stone

GREEN PIONEERS: Angela Morris

WOOL is supposed to keep things warm, but for Angela Morris it is doing the opposite. The founder of Woolcool has developed a way to use nature’s best insulation material to create eco-friendy packaging that is more effective than plastics at keeping heat out.
Woolcool already has some high-profile customers, including River Cottage, the organic-food firm owned by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, as well as the National Trust and Daylesford Organics.
She claims that her material could one day replace polystyrene and polyethylene as the packaging used to transport and store many perishables, such as fresh food.
“It actually performs better “Health and safety guidelines call for it to keep food at 5C for 24 hours and Woolcool can double that.
“Now we are working on ways to improve the design, making the packing lighter and more cost effective.”
By using 100% wool packing inside cardboard boxes, every element of the food boxes can be recycled, composted in the garden or reused. “It is also completely sustainable,” said Morris. “There are 22m shearable sheep in this country and they grow new fleeces every year.”
Woolcool’s sales are growing strongly from £150,000 in the first year to a projected £250,000 this year, and Morris thinks the product has the potential to reach sales of millions of pounds. But for such an expansion she would need to raise more funds, and this could be a problem. “The banks have been terrible lately,” she said. “Working capital has been a big issue holding back our growth and product development.”
Morris maintains that the trend towards greener products could help to take Woolcool into the mainstream. “It's not just about the financial bottom line anymore. Woolcool is much less costly in environmental terms and such things may well be reflected in the price of polystyrene one day. Local councils are increasingly reluctant to take it as waste.
“The plastic industry is very clever at presenting its packaging as somehow green and reusable, but it gives off toxic gases even while you are storing it and it never breaks down. It is also highly flammable and it is much bulkier to transport and store.
“Woolcool takes up a third of the space of polystyrene and this helps to cut its carbon footprint. And, of course, its totally sustainable – oil is not going to last for ever.”
Morris’s search for more sustainable packaging began in 2005 after the National Trust asked her to create greener boxes to ship the home-delivered chilled food sold by its tenant farmers. Discovering that the only nontoxic alternatives to oil-based packaging did not keep food cold enough, she set about looking for something else.
“I soon realised there was nothing else out there,” said Morris. “It’s understandable the National Trust didn’t want to use polystyrene. The problem with it and other oil-based products is that it’s toxic, it’s bulky to transport and it is not biodegradeable.”
Hearing that wool was being used in loft insulation, she ordered a roll and started experimenting, reshaping the material and putting it into fibreboard bags. “I didn’t really expect much from it but when we did the first temperature tests it performed amazingly well and I realised there might be something in it,” said Morris.
The main problem she faces is price. A Woocool box costs about 50% more than a polystyrene one. “When we start selling much larger quantities we can bring the price down but at the moment it is a premium product,” she said.