LESVOS WOOL

 "islands can be studied as both models for the future and as depositories of the past" 

(Island Studies Network)

There are about three hundred thousand ewes on Lesvos Island, bread for meat and milk, intended for cheese and yoghurt. Ninety to ninety-five percent of the sheep are from the local breed, the so-called lesbian breed. Their black wool was praised for its resistance, and there used to be twelve wool factories on the island, the last one closed less than twenty years ago.

Long gathered by trucks, the wool was still collected for export until the "lockdown" of 2020. Nowadays, it is abandoned on road-sides, piled up in illegal dump yards, and ends up clogging streams. The E. coli loaden raw wool is a biohazard and a source of bacterial infections for living beings. Wool is treated as garbage.

Breeder Stelios says, his grand-father, who was also a shepherd, told him that, in his time "when a sheep would die in the mountains somewhere, we would go to sheer it, take all the wool. One fleece was worth four days work."

Natural hot springs, two mountains of 1000m each and the surrounding sea were locations for the water-demanding stage of scouring (washing) wool. When ewes are bread outside, hence relatively clean, one kilogram of wool requires an estimated 100 litres of water to be washed. In Lesvos, sheep are bred in stables from the end of the fall until they are shorn in May. Therefore, the wool is not clean. Raw wool washed in the laboratory shows four times more biomass than the local water-clearing system can process.

Vision for the island of Lesvos  revalorizing the local wool

The University of the Aegean is present on the island with the Institute for Environmental Studies, the Institute of Sociology and the Institute of Cultural Technology, all of which have a direct connection with the wool. Being in synergy with them will infuse, on the one hand, the contemporary research on the wool, its sustainability and symbolism for a caring society, and on the other hand will motivate its use locally.

In the form of waste management, the evaluated 300.000 kilos of wool produced every year, can be entirely put to use in a processing plant. The selection procedure allocates the raw fibres into categories. The finest quality is transformed into a mini-mill. Scoured and carded, it is either intended for felting or spun into wool bales for knitting and weaving,  the wool can be used in larger quantities for bedding. The rougher quality can be used in the building industry, according to experimental stages and finally, unwashed woo is transformed into fertilizer pellets.

Education programs run parallel to the processing plants and ateliers, covering the stages of textile design, engineering, mechanics, chemistry and biology, environmental management, and social design but also the therapeutic usages of the wool in day care centres, hospitals and elderly homes; artists' residencies and exchange programs directed to bridge cultures and generations, i.e. involving people with migration background and elderly locals to share technical knowledge. Workshops on-site and in schools, from kindergarten level to higher education, support the multiplication of employment opportunities, lively museums and educational farms.

Designers and craftspeople, along with breeders, technicians and scientists, develop and research best practices. Ateliers, cooperatives and small factories revive local traditions adapted to contemporary aesthetics and needs by producing and distributing unique products and services. Documentation and heritage branding secure the visibility and recognition of Lesvos wool.

Revaluing the wool rewards breeders directly. Moving away from monoculture and over-milking, the breeding conditions improve for livestock and farmers, attention to quality increases, activities around dairy breeding diversify, over-grazing decreases. There are openings in niche markets, such as eco-farms welcoming visitors and working with schools,  as well as higher education researchers or chef cooks.

With the increase in employment and education concerning these matters, the value of local riches gets restored, and social and environmental conditions get improved.