At Roosenstein Wolke, we believe that clothing is only truly sustainable if it can be reused. That's why, together with our suppliers in Portugal, we have developed a 100% circular sweater in-house. Every part of this sweater can be reused, recycled or naturally broken down.
The basis: our circular yarn
The core of our circular sweater is the yarn. This 100% wool yarn consists of half our own recycled wool fibers and half new wool. This way, we maintain the quality that Roosenstein Wolke stands for and we know exactly where all materials come from.
Because we source the new wool ourselves, we have full control over its origin and quality. The yarn can be reused two to three times. After that, the fibers are too short to make a high-quality product from them, but because it is made entirely of natural wool, it is biodegradable.
Old clothing as raw material
All the yarns we use consist of pure compositions. This means we can recycle them entirely in-house into new yarn. For high-quality reuse, a yarn may contain a maximum of five percent of other materials.
There are some exceptions, such as combinations of different types of wool or a mix of wool and silk, but in most cases, we work with a pure fiber type. This makes recycling easier and the result better.
In addition to reusing clothing that we receive back from consumers, we also collect the material that remains with our suppliers after production. Because we knit our products, cutting waste is minimal, but what remains is not thrown away by us. While this residual material is often incinerated elsewhere, we reuse it as raw material for new yarn.
One design, one system
To make the sweater truly circular, we look beyond just the fabric. For all our products, we use the same black haberdashery. This is a nod to our icon, the Rooscap, which has been made from blue broadcloth with black haberdashery since 1886.
These haberdashery items are either recycled or biodegradable. By standardizing them across all our products, we can easily reuse them during collection. This way, even the smallest details remain part of the same cycle.
Continuous improvement
The development of our circular sweater is an ongoing process. We continue to research how we can recycle yarns even more efficiently, how we can better utilize residual material, and how we can further expand reuse.
Our sweaters last for decades, so we have time to further close this circle. Step by step, we are building a future where nothing is lost and every fiber can be reused.