Laundry is a top source of microplastic pollution—here's how to clean your clothes more sustainably
Laundry is a top source of microplastic pollution—here's how to clean your clothes more sustainably
Your washing machine is polluting the ocean.
The most common microplastics in the environment are microfibers—plastic fragments shaped like tiny threads or filaments. Microfibers come from many sources, including cigarette butts, fishing nets and ropes, but the biggest source is synthetic fabrics, which constantly shed them.
Textiles shed microfibers while they are manufactured, worn and disposed of, but especially when they are washed. A single wash load can release several million microfibers. Many factors affect how many fibers are released, including fabric type, mechanical action, detergents, temperature and the duration of the wash cycle.
So now that microplastics are the new hotness, industry is going to run the same plays they did when climate change became critical: blaming and shaming us for their mistakes, and trying to sell us more stuff to work around the problem they created.
I'd love a new washer and dryer, but I live in an apartment and don't get a choice and I can't buy a house because housing is now an investment vehicle. I'd love to hang out my clothes to dry, but because we've gutted healthcare, social services and housing, they get stolen by homeless and/or addicts. I'd love to not have to wash clothes as often, but I have to go into the office and look "presentable" because we can't have commercial real estate lose value by having people work from home.
How about we stop shaming people and bust the proverbial balls of capitalism instead?
Ooooh sorry we can't make money doing that, so.......
I get the sentiment, and you're not wrong! Just wanted to point out that you don't need a clothes line, a collapsible drying rack will work great! You can also avoid synthetics when possible, and more people should. Not saying you have to, but synthetics tend not to last as long because they shed so much, among other reasons. Most synthetics are some derivative of plastic, and others are awful environmentally at production. Plenty of alternatives feel nicer and last longer than polyester for example. Avoid a synthetic blend flannel or sweater, buy 100% cotton or another natural fabric. Or try a tencel/cotton blend for softness if you want! Your clothes will last longer, look better, and fit nicer. There's a reason that jeans from the 70s are still wearable while the $300 designer stretch jeans from Nordstrom start to pill after a few wears/washes and lose their shape and form. Real Denim is just tightly woven cotton yarns.
All great advice but I want to single this out:
You can also avoid synthetics when possible, and more people should.
The same issue applies to this as it does to most things, groceries springs to mind.
Just like with food where the fresh, healthier food options are often more expensive, the same goes for better made and single material made clothing.
The boots theory is a great example of what I mean.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
Another attempt to take a problem that huge corporations are causing and trying to push it on people. This is like the whole "turn your thermostat down X degrees to go green" when like 10 companies are responsible for killing the planet.
Take your bike to work every day in the rain and snow, so that it can compensate for 30 sec of private jet flight
Im bored at work, and you've given me a mathematical itch to scratch.
A quick search tells me that a liter of gasoline being burned emits 2.3 kg of CO2. Another quick search, after digging through a few weasel words, tells me a liter of jet fuel emits 3.16 kg of CO2 when burned.
I ride a motorcycle (975 Nightster for reference) to work most of the time, and it gets 100 km on 5 liters pretty easily. Riding to work and back is about 40 minutes, and a total distance of about 33 kilometers round trip.
A Learjet 45 Apparently uses 580 liters per hour.
For me to ride to work, I use ~1.65 liters of gasoline which works out to 3.8 kg of CO2.
A single four-hour flight on the aforementioned private jet is 2,320 liters of jet fuel, which is 7,331 kg of CO2. To offset that, I'd need to ride my bicycle or walk to work for 1,929 days or approximately 7 years.
Tl:dr - it says that you need to disregard the premise in the headline and demand that corporations (that pump more microplastics into the environment in an hour than you and your extended family could in 300,000 lifetimes) KNOCK THAT SHIT THE FUCK OFF.
Over the last 10 or so years I eliminated all plastic fibres from my warderobe almost entirely. Problem almost solved. Industry and politics: too little, too late. Again.
I tried to read the article, but it was a struggle - I skimmed bits. But, I'm pretty sure it never suggested reducing the amount of plastic in your clothes as an option.
Cotton, wool, linen, silk, hemp, bamboo, etc..
Even Rayon/Viscose is “decent”, as it’s a pulp and paper product.
Downside is that it is much, much easier to find near-100% natural products as a guy than as a girl. A lot of clothing for women come only in synthetic fibres, and the struggle for my wife is very, very real.
And even as a guy, you have to be aware of mixes. Many fabrics may be up to 95% of one thing (cotton, etc.), but then have a half-dozen synthetic additives (for additional physical attributes, like stretchiness) that then contribute to those microfibres that don’t easily break down.
Even as a hard Atheist, I frequently (and jokingly) turn down clothing due to the fact that it violates Leviticus 19:19.
True question: bamboo, rayon, viscose, tencel, etc... are "natural" product artificially polymerized. Aren't these similar to plastics in the sense of a polymerized chain?
Does it degrades faster than "traditional" plastics? I'll have to look into that.
And I otherwise completely agree with you. I'm now only buying if cotton/linen/wool. However hard to find clothes made 100% with these. :(
Most of my artificial fibre clothes are for exercise, what did you do around that? I value the sweat wicking, quick drying properties.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Same, everything I have is either cotton or wool.
It was partially for sustainability, and partially because plastic clothes feel horrible, irritate my skin, and suck at wicking moisture.
What materials did you replace them with?
Linen and wool whenever possible. Or cotton, which has some issues (needs a lot of water to grow, gets damp very easily - sweat and rain! - and takes a long time to dry)
TL;DR: microplastics bad, do less laundry. Can't believe I wasted my brain reading this.
We installed one of these to keep micro plastics and fibers out of our septic system.
Works well as far as we can tell.
Yes, my cotton shirts and pants are the problem. Yup.
I used to work for a company that made precast concrete parts. One of the things they made was the faux stone walls that go around some fancy neighborhoods. They are poured into a mold, and one side of the mold has a plastic insert for the stone pattern. The plastic inserts, which are larger than any piece of plastic in your house, are used to make one wall and then they are tossed. This is one small company, and it's an example of the plastic waste we don't see or even think about, while we are told that our clothes are being washed wrong.
Stop buying plastic clothing?
Dont
Baloney. Everything we eat, touch, wear- is contaminated or made with plastics. Has been since the very begining of the plastics industry. Massive massive overuse and over production. From baby bottles to the syringes you inject your tranq with- plastics.
Use a front loading washing machine.
Excuse me? The type that breaks down faster vs top loading?