Some 55 billion parcels are shipped in bubble wrap yearly. Plastic bubble wrap is reliant on fossil fuels and 98% of plastic packaging is single-use. You may think about the adversarial environmental impression of all this plastic.

The founders of Woola have been operating an internet e-commerce retailer and noticed the packaging drawback first-hand. The dearth of choices in sustainable and scalable protecting packaging led to them re-discovering wool — an unused useful resource that’s elastic and regulates temperatures and humidity.

The consequence was their startup, which makes use of leftover sheep wool to interchange bubble wrap. These wool-based packages may be reused, repurposed, or returned by the end-user, with the last word purpose of creating the answer ‘closed-loop’ so nothing goes to waste.

Woola opened a manufacturing facility in Estonia and launched its first product in December 2020. Wool envelopes have been the primary merchandise to hit the market. It’s now increasing to the UK, France and Germany. The subsequent product rolling out in January 2022 is focused at beverage firms.

They’ve now a raised €2.5M Seed spherical led by Future Ventures. Future is joined by co-investors Kaarel Kotkas (CEO at Veriff), Janer Gorohhov (Co-founder at Veriff), Kristina Lilleõis (VP of Individuals at Veriff), Zem Joaquin (founding father of Close to Future Summit), Bryan Meehan (govt chair of Blue Bottle Espresso). Woola’s earlier traders embrace the co-founders of Pipedrive, Bolt and the angel fund Lemonade Stand.

“Bubble wrap has been dominating the packaging trade for ages – however its decline is inevitable,” stated Woola’s CEO and co-founder Anna-Liisa Palatu. “The trade is damaged for 2 causes: fossil gasoline reliance and single-use mindset. We have to do away with each to make packaging extra sustainable.” She is joined by co-founders Jevgeni Sirai and Katrin Kabun.

Steve Jurvetson from Future Ventures commented: “Whereas e-commerce is booming, single-use plastic packaging is uncontrolled. Woola can substitute all of it with stunning envelopes produced from scrap wool that might in any other case be burned or buried. The world wants sustainable alternate options to the petrochemical economic system for a more healthy future.”

Sheep wool is an unused useful resource – greater than 200,000 tonnes of wool is thrown away in Europe yearly. Woola says this is sufficient to fulfill 120% of the worldwide bubble wrap demand.

The startup will compete with whitelabel plastic bubble wrap and alternate options like Ranpak and S-Packaging.