For most of us, the clothes we choose to buy and wear are reflective of our unique fashion styles and preferences. They come in all sorts of designs and are made from various materials to create one-of-a-kind pieces for its wearers. But did you know that your clothes are one of the biggest culprits of microplastic pollution? If you take a look at the tag on your shirt stating wash instructions, it is highly likely that it would have some form of microfibre listed as one of the ingredients.
Much of our clothes today are made out of a variety of plastic components, including polyester, acrylics, nylon and other types of synthetic fibres. It is estimated that plastics make up almost 60% of all materials used to make the clothes we wear today (Resnick, 2019). To make matters worse, for every item of clothing washed in the washing machine, over 700,000 microscopic fibres are released into the wastewater that eventually makes its way into our oceans and get discharged into the waters (Barrett, 2018). Just imagine how much microplastics we create from one cycle of laundry, when you multiply it by the amount of cycles we do in a day, month or year – there’s probably enough microfibres to make a few thousand shirts and pants each!
As another form of primary microplastics, microfibres also contribute significantly to the plastic soup in our ocean. Tests done by the Institute for Polymers, Composites and Biomaterials (IPCB) in Italy found that the first wash of clothes often released the most microfibres ((De Falco, Di Pace, Cocca & Avella, 2019). Although the amount of microfibres released during subsequent washes were not as high, they still pose a cause for deep concern considering the proliferation of microfibre plastics found in the environment. The same study also found that polyester, cotton and modal fabric mixes created the highest amount of plastics. It is interesting to note that other studies have found that polyester and polyester-cotton blends were the second and third highest contributors of fashion microplastics (Napper & Thomson, 2016), suggesting that polymer is a key polluter.
Many microfibre particles end up in wastewater and effluent discharge, much of which is used to either irrigate crops (as mentioned in the previous blog) or is released into the ocean, which end up posing considerable threats to the health and safety of land and marine creatures alike. Hence, it is important that we take a closer look at the composition of our clothes and make environmentally-conscious decisions to buy those that won’t create a stew out of our plastic soup oceans.
Bibliography:
De Falco, F., Di Pace, E., Cocca, M., & Avella, M. (2019). The contribution of washing processes of synthetic clothes to microplastic pollution. Scientific Reports, 9(1). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-43023-x
Napper, I., & Thompson, R. (2016). Release of synthetic microplastic plastic fibres from domestic washing machines: Effects of fabric type and washing conditions. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 112(1-2), 39-45. DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2016.09.025
Resnick, B. (2019). More than ever, our clothes are made of plastic. Just washing them can pollute the oceans. Retrieved 16 September 2020, from https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/19/17800654/clothes-plastic-pollution-polyester-washing-machine
