Have you ever saved 1000 liters of water with just one T-shirt? Or did you know that you can make four whole WoodShirts from just one kilo of wood?

Since 2015, we have been creating sustainable fashion from wood that is not only produced ecologically but also fairly in Portugal, specifically north of Porto.

Although sustainable clothing made from wood may sound unusual at first, it is an extremely environmentally friendly alternative to conventional materials like cotton and polyester.

Wood is a natural, biodegradable raw material that, unlike cotton, is also native to our climate zone. The wood for our clothing comes exclusively from sustainable forestry and originates, among other places, from Austria, Germany, or the Czech Republic.

Sustainable forestry describes a form of forest management that balances ecological, social, and economic aspects. The main focus here is the idea of the forest's natural ability to regenerate, which simply means that the forest is preserved and protected for future generations.

However, forests are more than just a collection of many trees. They are a valuable ecosystem and serve as a habitat for various animal, fungal, and plant species. Additionally, they help protect water and soil by increasing the soil’s water retention capacity with their roots and preventing erosion.

Forests also play an extremely important role in our climate. They remove CO² from the air and store it in trees and soil. It is estimated that 49% of the world’s CO² is stored in trees. By processing wood into wood products, the stored CO² remains locked in, as it is only released during the biological decomposition of the wood. This means wood products, such as our WoodShirts, contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and can replace more climate-damaging materials.

Unlike conventional cotton, a significant difference in environmental friendliness can already be seen at the tree planting stage. While no additional fertilizers are needed in forestry to achieve yields for producing wood fiber, various fertilizers and pesticides are used for growing cotton. The substances used, including aldicarb, have strong environmental impacts and contribute to freshwater and terrestrial pollution. In fact, the mentioned pesticide causes more than 80% of the freshwater pollution originating from the cultivation soil.

Moreover, the high water consumption due to artificial irrigation of cotton plantations in low-rainfall areas even leads to significant permanent ecological damage. A sad negative example is the drying up of the Aral Sea, once the largest inland body of water on Earth.
Forests, on the other hand, do not require artificial irrigation and can also store water longer and in greater quantities than a comparable open area.

Another advantage of the raw material wood for clothing lies in the cultivation area. For the same amount of fibers, the required area for cotton is on average 300 to 500% larger than for fibers derived from wood. Additionally, no new land needs to be cleared for forest management, unlike monocultures such as cotton.

The process for producing viscose fibers could probably be called the ancestor of our fabric and was already developed in the 1890s. However, the viscose production process has some disadvantages. Carbon disulfide is used as a solvent, which is not only harmful to the environment and health but also very resource-intensive.

The process used to produce the fibers for our wood-based clothing, on the other hand, stands out especially in comparison to other cellulose-based regenerated fibers due to its environmental friendliness.

In the first step, cellulose is extracted from the wood. This produces the pulp, which is then dissolved in organic, environmentally friendly N-methylmorpholine-N-oxide (NMMO) by removing water without chemical modification. It is important to mention that toxic reagents, such as the already mentioned carbon disulfide (CS2), are completely avoided throughout the process. The pulp is then filtered and finally pressed through spinnerets. The resulting fibers are precipitated in a bath of aqueous NMMO solution and then combined into fiber cables.

The solvent can be recycled repeatedly because it is very easy to remove from the fiber due to its good water miscibility. The recycling rate is an impressive 99.5-99.8%. This makes fiber production environmentally friendly and conserves valuable resources.

You can already see how many resources can be saved by comparing the water consumption of the wood fiber we use with that of cotton.

To produce 1 kg of wood fibers, 0.02 m³ of process water and 0.243 m³ of cooling water are required. However, to produce a fiber from the cotton plant, only 0.005 m³ of process water and 0.037 m³ of cooling water are used, but a full 5.69 m³ of water is used for irrigation. Additionally, 70% of the water for cotton fiber production comes from groundwater and 30% from surface water. Overall, the water consumption for cotton fiber production is 10 to 20 times higher – and without cooling water, already 100 to 500% higher – than for the wood fibers in our clothing. Finally, it should be noted that most of the water used in wood fiber production is only used for cooling purposes and is returned to surface waters unpolluted.

The energy balance of the wood fiber production process is also impressive. In fact, only 0.1 kg of CO² is released per kilogram of fiber produced, while cotton production generates 2 kg of CO² per kilogram of fiber. Thus, using wood fibers instead of cotton can reduce CO² emissions by a factor of 20. It is also important to mention that the energy for wood fiber production is almost exclusively obtained from waste products (such as bark and lye); specifically, 86.3% of the fuels used are non-fossil and CO²-neutral.

Fibers derived from wood, like the wood they come from, have a very high level of biodegradability. Unlike synthetic materials such as polyester, which are most commonly used in the fashion industry and take centuries to break down or decompose, cellulose-based fibers like lyocell take only a few years to biodegrade and leave no harmful residues behind.

With our project, we want to do more than just produce eco-friendly clothing. We want to offer alternatives, create understanding for the complex work steps, provide behind-the-scenes insights, and thereby increase appreciation. Since we use a raw material from nature, we want to give back more and stand up for nature.

That’s why, since the founding of wijld, we have planted a tree in Mexico for every order and supported a local reforestation project there. In 2021, we acquired our own forest area near Marsberg in the Sauerland and started our own reforestation project. Together with you, we want to reforest this forest area destroyed by climate change so that a species-rich forest can grow.

With wijld, we want to advocate on the one hand for the use of sustainable raw materials, and on the other hand, we want to raise awareness about the working conditions under which fashion is created. Unfortunately, the majority of fashion worldwide is produced under inhumane conditions. This not only refers to sewing clothes but rather the entire process, starting with the raw material, such as the cotton plant.

We would like to raise awareness of how many people work together to create a single garment. Understanding these backgrounds, as well as the knowledge of the long production chains, allows one to see clothing in a different light. We hope that with our small project, we can contribute to more transparency and thus foster an understanding that leads to more conscious shopping and wearing clothes longer.

That is exactly what sustainability means to us.