Saw this quote on their front-page

> Merino wool is renewable. It’s made up of proteins and amino acids. It naturally breaks down in water and soil.

So what happens when I was the cloth or sweat?

How long is the expected lifetime of the product if water speeds up degradation?

Wood also breaks down naturally in water and soil and yet there are wood buildings that are hundreds of years old. If you dry your woolen clothes before fungi and bacteria populations explode they'll be fine. Loss of fiber through abrasion will ruin the clothing long before it is eaten.

I have decades old wool sweaters. And my oldest wool base layers must be 10 years old. It's not a problem. If you dig it down in the ground or dump it in a lake it will break down with time.

Are they 100% wool?

Wooly jumpers, especially when made of fragile merino wool, remain usable for much longer when they are made of a mix that includes plastic fibers (maybe 75% merino, 25% polyester).

The sweaters are 100% wool, but are the thick knitted type. Think a classic fisherman sweater or the Icelandic lopapeysa. These are not merino. Base layer is merino, might be a polyester/wool mix.

I mean, it's not going to dissolve like cotton-candy under water either. It's essentially like hair. I imagine you'd need to keep it in a place with ample microbial activity like in soil or swampish water for a few weeks to see the degradation.

I do think it needs more care than fabrics like cotton or polyester. I wash wool separately on delicate and air dry. The centrifugal drying by the washing machine gets rid of nearly all the water, leaving them moist rather than damp.