Researching sheep’s wool as an eco-friendly insulation material

We're hoping to start a smaller industry of making wool insulation. Whether working with companies, that are already in place or, setting up some facilities. We're interested in looking at other biomaterials than just wood. So, most of the time we talk about biomaterials or plant based, but this is animal based. But, it is renewable because it's being harvested every year. And the sheep farmers were interested in seeing what could be done with this wool. It's a natural product. So in terms of, we think about how much carbon we're putting into a building. This is a lower carbon product. It's also something that's readily available in our area. One of the main things we want to know about it is called the R-value. Basically, that's how heat flows through it. And the bigger the R-value, the less heat flows through it, the better it is for insulation. So far, the thermal resistance of the wool is similar to fiberglass insulation. Thus far, we've made some vats of insulation of the wool. with our tests, it's reading like, similar to our values, which is the thermal resistance to fiberglass. It's exciting to see for sure. There's other opportunities. One of them that I'm really interested in in our department is, using this for cushioning, for packaging materials. A lot of companies have made sustainability commitments. Most of that cushioning comes from plastics or petroleum based products, foams and things like that. So, having sustainable alternatives for that, could open markets for that too. This is just a good experience for me overall. It’s teaching me, like, how to work with different materials, how to test them. It's definitely valuable to practice taking something from an idea and then making it into something real and tactful.