{"id":61500,"date":"2023-12-29T10:53:40","date_gmt":"2023-12-29T18:53:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/energi.media\/?p=61500"},"modified":"2023-12-29T10:53:40","modified_gmt":"2023-12-29T18:53:40","slug":"how-do-you-tackle-microplastics-start-with-your-washing-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/energi.media\/news\/how-do-you-tackle-microplastics-start-with-your-washing-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"How do you tackle microplastics? Start with your washing machine."},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was published by Grist<\/a> on April 19, 2023.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Saqib Rahim<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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As environmental challenges go, microfibre pollution has come from practically out of nowhere. It was only a decade or so ago that scientists first suspected our clothing, increasingly made of synthetic materials like polyester and nylon, might be major contributors to the global plastic problem<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Today a growing body of science suggests the tiny strands that slough off clothes are everywhere and in everything.\u00a0By one estimate<\/a>, they account for as much as one-third of all microplastics released to the ocean. They\u2019ve been found on Mount Everest and in the Mariana Trench, along with tap water, plankton, shrimp guts, and\u00a0our poo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Research has yet to establish just what this means for human and planetary health. But the emerging science has left some governments, particularly in the Global North, scrambling to respond. Their first target: the humble washing machine, which environmentalists say represents a major way microfibre pollution reaches the environment.<\/p>\n

Late last month a California State Assembly committee held a hearing on\u00a0Assembly Bill 1628<\/a>, which would require new washing machines to include devices that trap particles down to 100 micrometers \u2014 roughly the width of human hair \u2014 by 2029. The Golden State isn\u2019t alone here, or even first. France already approved such a requirement, effective 2025. Lawmakers in Oregon and Ontario, Canada have considered similar bills. The European Commission says it\u2019ll do the same in 2025.<\/p>\n

Environmental groups, earth scientists and some outdoor apparel companies cheer the policies as an important first response to a massive problem. But quietly, some sustainability experts feel perplexed by all the focus on washers. They doubt filters will achieve much, and say what\u2019s really needed is a comprehensive shift in\u00a0how we make<\/a>,\u00a0clean<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0dispose<\/a>\u00a0of clothes.<\/p>\n

The wash is \u201conly one shedding point in the lifecycle of the garment. To focus on that tiny, tiny moment of laundry is completely nuts,\u201d said Richard Blackburn, a professor of sustainable materials at the University of Leeds. \u201cIt would be much better to focus on the whole life cycle of the garment, of which the manufacturing stage is much more significant in terms of loss than laundering, but all points should be considered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, some 60 per cent of all textiles incorporate<\/a> synthetic material. Anyone who\u2019s worn yoga pants, workout gear or stretchy jeans knows the benefits: These materials add softness, wicking and flexibility. Under a microscope, though, they look a lot like plain old plastic. From the moment they\u2019re made, synthetic clothes \u2014 like all clothes \u2014 release tiny shreds of themselves. Once liberated these fibres are no easier to retrieve than glitter tossed into the wind. But their size, shape, and tendency to absorb chemicals leaves scientists concerned about their impacts on habitats and the food chain.<\/p>\n

Anja Brandon is an associate director for U.S. plastics policy at the Ocean Conservancy who has supported the California and Oregon bills. She concedes that filters won\u2019t fix the problem, but believes they offer a way to get started. She also supports clothing innovations but said they could be years away. \u201cI for one don\u2019t want to wait until it\u2019s a five-alarm fire,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Studies suggest a typical load of laundry can release thousands or even millions of fibres. Commercially available filters, like the PlanetCare, Lint LUV-R and Filtrol, strain the gray water through ultra-fine mesh before flushing it into the world. It\u2019s the owner\u2019s job, of course, to periodically empty that filter \u2014 ideally into a trash bag, which Brandon said will secure microfibres better than the status quo of letting them loose into nature.<\/p>\n

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Washing machine filters containing microfibres. Owen Humphreys\/PA Images via Getty Images<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>
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Washing machine manufacturers in the U.S. and Europe have pushed back, saying the devices pose technical risks, like flooding and increased energy consumption, that must be addressed\u00a0 first. University experiments with these filters, including an oft-cited\u00a02019 study by the University of Toronto and the Ocean Conservancy<\/a>, haven\u2019t found these issues, but it\u2019s not a closed case yet: Last year a federal\u00a0report<\/a> on microfibres, led by the Environmental Protection Agency and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, called for more research in this vein.<\/p>\n

Manufacturers also argue that microfibres originate in a lot of places, but washers are a relatively modest one. As self-serving as that sounds, people who study the issue agree there\u2019s a huge hole in the available science: While we know clothes shed microfibres throughout their lives, we know surprisingly little about when most of it happens.<\/p>\n

Some evidence suggests that the friction of simply\u00a0wearing<\/a> clothes might release about as many microfibres as washing them. Then there are dryers, which some suspect are a major source of microfibre litter but have been barely studied, according to the federal report. There is also limited knowledge about how much microfibre pollution comes from the developing world, where most people wash by hand. (A recent study<\/a> led by Hangzhou Dianzi University in Hangzhou, China pointed to this knowledge gap \u2013 and found that hand-washing two synthetic fabrics released on average 80 to 90 per cent fewer microfibre pollution than machine-washing.)<\/p>\n

To Blackburn, it\u2019s obvious that most releases occur in textile mills, where it\u2019s been known for centuries that spinning, weaving, dyeing and finishing fabric spritzes lots of fiber. \u201cWhere do you think it goes when we get it out of the factory?\u201d he said. \u201cIt goes into the open air.\u201d<\/p>\n

He calls filter policies \u201ctotally reactionary,\u201d arguing that they would at best shave a few percentage points off the total microfibre problem. But there is one area where Blackburn is in broad agreement with environmentalists: In the long run, tackling the issue will take a lot of new technology. No silver-bullet solution has appeared yet, but a slew of recent announcements reveals a vibrant scene of research and development attacking the problem from many angles.<\/p>\n

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Antonio Hugo Photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>
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Some best practices already are known within the industry. For example, more tightly woven clothes, and clothes made of long fibres rather than short ones, fray less. But for years, popular brands like Patagonia and REI have said what they really need is a way to experiment with many different materials and compare their shedding head to head. This has been tricky: Microfibres are, well, micro, and there\u2019s no industry standard on how to measure them.<\/p>\n

That might be changing. In separate announcements in February,\u00a0Hohenstein<\/a>, a company that develops international standards for textiles, and activewear brand\u00a0Under Armour<\/a> revealed new methods in this vein. Under Armour is targeting 75 per cent \u201clow-shed\u201d fabrics in its products by 2030.<\/p>\n

These approaches would at best reduce microfibres emissions, not eliminate them. So another field of research is what Blackburn calls \u201cbiocompatibility\u201d: making microfibres less harmful to nature. California-based companyIntrinsic Advanced Materials sells a pre-treatment, added to fabrics during manufacturing, that it claims helps polyester and nylon biodegrade in seawater within years rather than decades. Blackburn\u2019s own startup, Keracol, develops natural dyes, pulled from things like fruit waste, that break down more easily in nature than synthetic ones.<\/p>\n

New ideas to dispose of clothes are also emerging, though some will cause arched eyebrows among environmentalists. This year U.S. chemical giant Eastman will start building a facility in Normandy, France that it claims \u201cunzips\u201d hard-to-recycle plastics, like polyester clothes, into molecular precursors that can be fashioned into new products like clothes and insulation. Critics charge that such \u201cchemical recycling\u201d techniques are not only of\u00a0dubious benefit<\/a>\u00a0to the environment, they\u2019re really just a smokescreen for fossil-fuel corporations trying to keep their product in demand.<\/p>\n

Lest anyone forget about washing machines, there\u2019s R&D going after them, too. In January Patagonia and appliance giant Samsung\u00a0announced<\/a> a model that they claim cuts micro plastic emissions up to 54 per cent. It\u2019s already rolled out in Europe and Korea. At around the same time, University of Toronto researchers published research on a coating that, they claim, makes nylon fabric more slippery in the wash, reducing friction and thus microfibres emissions by 90 per cent after nine washes. In a press release<\/a>\u00a0the researchers tut-tutted governments for their focus on washing-machine filters, which they called a \u201cBand-Aid\u201d for the issue.<\/p>\n

One continuous thread through all these efforts, of course, is that everyone is working with imperfect information. The emerging science on microfibres \u2013 and microplastics in general \u2013 suggests they\u2019re a gritty fact of modern life<\/a>, but doesn\u2019t yet show the magnitude of their harm to humans and other species. For the moment environmentalists, policymakers and manufacturers aren\u2019t just debating whether to put filters on washing machines, but whether we know enough to act. In 20 years, when scientists know a lot more, it\u2019ll be easier to judge whether today\u2019s policies represented proactive leadership on an emerging environmental problem \u2014 or a soggy Band-Aid.<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s note: Patagonia is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist\u2019s editorial decisions.<\/em><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was published by Grist on April 19, 2023. By Saqib Rahim As environmental challenges go, microfibre pollution has come from practically out of nowhere. It was only a decade or so ago that [Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":61501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14,2566,793,2253,84],"class_list":{"0":"post-61500","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-featured","9":"tag-oceans","10":"tag-pollution","11":"tag-waste","12":"tag-water"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nmicroplastics - Thoughtful Journalism About Energy's Future<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Microplastics are a gritty\u00a0fact of modern life, but doesn\u2019t yet show the magnitude of their harm to humans and other species.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/energi.media\/news\/how-do-you-tackle-microplastics-start-with-your-washing-machine\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"microplastics - Thoughtful Journalism About Energy's Future\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Microplastics are a gritty\u00a0fact of modern life, but doesn\u2019t yet show the magnitude of their harm to humans and other species.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/energi.media\/news\/how-do-you-tackle-microplastics-start-with-your-washing-machine\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Thoughtful Journalism About Energy's Future\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/energimedia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-12-29T18:53:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/energi.media\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/microplastics.jpeg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"667\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Energi Staff\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@EnergiMedia\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@EnergiMedia\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Energi Staff\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/energi.media\\\/news\\\/how-do-you-tackle-microplastics-start-with-your-washing-machine\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/energi.media\\\/news\\\/how-do-you-tackle-microplastics-start-with-your-washing-machine\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Energi Staff\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/energi.media\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/07051d0cfb14da284c97fb8ff214caf7\"},\"headline\":\"How do you tackle microplastics? 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