A single clothes wash creates millions of plastic fibres which threaten our oceans, a study has found.
Scientists say people are producing plastic ‘microfibre’ waste from their fleeces and polyester clothing.
Plastic fibres from household laundry have been found in our food, from blue mussels to table salt and honey.
A single clothes wash creates millions of plastic fibres which threaten our oceans, a study has found (stock image)
Experts say up to 300 fibres per litre escape in the waste water from family washing machines and that synthetic clothing is 16 times more damaging for the environment than microbeads.
Now a study by the Italian National Research Council has found that just one 5kg (11lbs) load of washing can create 6 million to 17.7 million plastic microfibres.
Researchers say this can be cut by almost a third using fabric softener, which reduces the friction between fibres, but Greenpeace has warned this carries harmful chemicals into our waterways.
Part of the solution, the new study suggests, is to use liquid detergents which cause less friction and break off fewer fibres, and to put on shorter washes at lower temperatures.
Published in the journal Environmental Pollution, the study states: ‘The release of microplastics from synthetic clothes is caused by the mechanical and chemical stresses that fabrics undergo during a washing process in a laundry machine.
‘Due to their dimensions, a majority of released microfibres cannot be blocked by wastewater treatment plants, reaching in this way seas and oceans.’
Scientists say people are producing plastic ‘microfibre’ waste from their fleeces and polyester clothing (stock image)
The scientists carried out washing experiments on double-knit polyester used in jumpers, plain-weave polyester and polypropylene – used in outdoor clothing and thermal underwear.
Washing them with water alone produced an average of 162 fibres per gram of fabric, but that leapt to 1,273 fibres per gram using liquid detergent.
The findings suggest the environmentally conscious should use liquid instead of washing powder, however, as powder produced a massive 3,538 fibres per gram. Inorganic compounds in the powder which do not dissolve in water are believed to cause friction in clothing which causes fibres to break away.
A report released last month by fashion designer Stella McCartney and yachtswoman Dame Ellen MacArthur said half a million tonnes of plastic microfibres a year contribute to ocean pollution – 16 times more than the plastic microbeads from cosmetics.
And the problem is getting worse, as cheap synthetic fabrics become ever more popular worldwide.
The Italian researchers found the way we wash our clothes can make a difference, stating: ‘The obtained results indicate that higher temperature, washing time and mechanical action produced an increase of microplastics release, even if the recorded differences were not very significant.’
Up to 30 per cent of fibres released by washing machines are believed to escape, potentially making their way to waterways.
Others trapped in sludge within sewage works can end up draining into water after being spread on farmland.
Campaigners have called for people to wear clothes for longer periods and use recycled fabrics.
Author Atwood: Stop worshipping plastic
Margaret Atwood says the worship of plastic has become a ‘religion’ that is poisoning the planet
Margaret Atwood says the worship of plastic has become a ‘religion’ that is poisoning the planet.
The Handmaid’s Tale author said if she could reform one institution, it would be the plastics industry.
Miss Atwood added: ‘Are plastics an institution? Not in the sense of having a Pope, or even a small cabal of leaders. But they are surely the modern equivalent of a universal religion.
‘We worship them, whether we admit it or not. Their centre is whatever you happen to be doing, their circumference is everywhere; they’re as essential to our modern lives as the air we breathe, and they’re killing us. They must be stopped.’
The 78-year-old author told the Guardian: ‘Once upon a time, not so long ago – within my own lifetime, or just before its inception – there was hardly any plastic.
‘There was only Bakelite, used to make decorative dessert-fork handles and chunky art deco jewellery.
‘Cheap toys were made of tin. Garbage was rolled up in newspaper and tied with string, because there were no plastic bin-bags. There were no exercise balls. Rubber gloves were made of rubber. But then came the marvellous multi-plastic world of the 1950s that has been with us ever since. Look around your life: your trash-disposal stratagems, your bottled water containers, your hummus tubs and snap-top salad boxes, your computer keyboard keys, your grocery bags, just for a few obvious examples.
‘Where would you be without plastic? What could take its place?’
Miss Atwood added: ‘But all this plastic – or most of it – eventually ends up in the water supply, including the drinking water and the oceans.
‘Eight million tonnes of plastic waste is added to the oceans every year. Because of oestrogen-imitating chemicals leaching from discarded plastics, the fertility of male sperm is plunging, and frogs are developing intersex traits.
‘Worse, microplastic particles are seriously affecting fish fry and phytoplankton. That’s bad news for us, because phytoplankton are the basic building block of oceanic life.’
Miss Atwood said ‘dead oceans mean dead people’ because humans relied on healthy oceans for food and to replenish the oxygen we breathed. She called for organic and biodegradable substitutes to be used instead of plastic, and for microplastics to be filtered from seawater.