Insulation material derived from coarse wool waste is a proven nature-based solution familiar to Rajasthan’s pastoral community, but long overlooked by the outside world.
Until, that is, Prerna Agarwal, founder of Samakhya Sustainable Alternatives, found out from the shepherds how they tide over the searing desert summer thanks to “thanda oon (coarse wool cloth that cools)” from their livestock.
Wool — a staple of winter-wear — to keep cool? Sounds counter-intuitive, but the indigenous wool provides insulation to keep the wearer cool. By extension, wool could also provide good insulation to cool indoor temperatures significantly.
Looking to provide the marginalised community a livelihood, in 2022 Agarwal innovated to create Magra, a natural material suited for thermal and acoustic insulation.
Handholding her was the innovation programme hosted by the social enterprise SEEDS (Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society), which works on disaster management and helps increase the resilience of marginalised communities in the face of climate change.
Its Humanitarian Innovation Lab programme bridges gaps in knowledge and resources between the global north and south and “enables local innovators to identify problems and propose solutions for urgent humanitarian challenges that India faces,” explains Sumeet Agarwal, Director, Built Environment, SEEDS.
The programme provides innovators technical support and funding, and helps them scale up by developing partnerships between different stakeholders. SEEDS has so far incubated 13 humanitarian innovations.
On her work in creating Magra, Prerna Agarwal points out that “90 per cent of the coarse fibre from sheep shearing gets wasted despite the fact that India is the second largest importer of wool”. Her startup began working with the pastoral community to make use of this coarse waste fibre.
Several ongoing pilot projects, aided by SEEDS, have shown that the Magra insulation material is effective in addressing both extremely hot and cold climes. When the outside temperature was 43.7 degrees C, a layer of Magra insulation could cut it to 32.8 degrees C indoors. In winter, when it was 12 degrees C outside, the inside could be a comfortable 16 degrees C.
Not just that, “the thermal conductivity of the material has proved to be too low, and hence it can be pitched as a climate-negative material,” explains Sumeet Agarwal. It is naturally breathable, renewable, and biodegradable.
Samakhya is working with the pastoral community at three levels. It has set up community collection centres where sheep are sheared and the coarse fibre is collected. The material is moved to fibre processing centres, and finally to the product processing centre. The startup also provides the community support services such as vaccines, fodder and water; its centres double as safe-houses for nomadic herders. “There has been a three-fold increase in income for the herders, and a ten-time increase for the microentrepreneurs who carry out many of the tasks,” says Prerna Agarwal.
Product innovations with the Magra material continue, with Samakhya re-imagining lifestyle products like soft toys for exports, and bio-fertilizers using the wool dust and slurry.