Another day, another unsettling fact about the fashion industry’s terrible impacts.

Textile is the 3rd largest contributor to plastic waste generation.

What does that mean? And to what extent does it affect us ?

The reliance of the fashion industry on Synthetic fibres at the origin of the problem:

You might have read or heard or about it before, but the fashion industry is increasingly relying on synthetic fibres-based garments. Cheap oil-derived materials like polyester or acrylic are dominating the market, making up for 62.5% of all fibres produced and being present in no less than 70% of all clothing items sold. The main reason being the affordability and scalability of plastic yarn production, allowing for the current overproducing model that Fast Fashion brands have embraced in the last 20+ years. The problem being that this automatically means that textiles that are being discarded at a faster rate, are in fact plastic textile waste. With 42 million tons of it being thrown away each year, fashion represents 13% of all plastic waste. However, not only are plastic textiles much harder (if not impossible) to recycle, but we've also started to realise that they release microplastics all along their lifespan.

What are microplastic fibres?

First, we need to understand what microfibres are. Microfibres are essentially small-sized particles that are released or shed into the environment from all kinds of fibrous materials (textiles), such as clothes, agricultural, industrial, and home textiles... This phenomenon occurs at all stages of the life cycle: during the production process, use, or the disposal and disintegration of the products.

Microfibres can originate from all textiles, natural of synthetic.

But as you might have guessed now, the issue lies with the synthetic ones. Remember that we are talking about plastic-like materials here: they don’t biodegrade. Once plastic is created, it doesn’t go away, it can only break down into smaller and smaller pieces. That is why microfibres that synthetic fabrics release are in fact micro-plastics. This type of pollution is irreversible and cumulating.

Even if the phenomenon has only recently started to be studied, we already have some pretty concerning information about it:

• Clothes seem to be shedding microplastics continuously during their use phase, both while we wear and wash them.

• One piece of clothing can release 700,000 fibres in a single wash.

• These microplastics are so small that they can drain out of our washing machines and pass straight through wastewater treatment plants into the sea. Recent studies estimate that they could be responsible for 35% of ocean plastic pollution.

• It appears that low-quality material sheds even more readily than other well-made garments (ones with tighter fibres).

Poisoning ourselves

These microplastic are in fact just another way that we humans have found to poison themselves. Everytime we wash our clothes made of plastic, we pollute our own freshwater and down the line our whole food chain. But we also directly compromise the air we breathe since the shedding also accures just by wearing these clothes. The Plastic Soup report on microplastics estimates that 30% of our indoor environment and dust is made of microplastics, having direct effects on our health. Chronic inflammation induced by microplastic inhalation contributes to severe health ailments, including cancer, heart disease, asthma, and diabetes, children being particularly vulnerable.

Navigating the Solutions

While the inclination towards natural fibres seems like a (natural) solution, a little warning must be given. As mentioned before, all textiles shed microfibres. And even if natural fibres’ are on paper not harmful, they can be when the garment has been heavily treated with all sorts of chemicals during growing, manufacturing or finishing processes. The extent of the harm depends on how natural the fibre has been kept.

Regarding consumers, we recommend minimizing the purchase of synthetic clothing to items that require it such as outerwear, waterproof attire, and activewear. As always, keep it monofibre when possible, for better reuse/recycling potential. Additionally, there are several solutions available to capture microplastic fibres during the laundry process, including the use of speicifc nets, filtration balls, or washing machines filters. These actions can have a significantly help in mitigating microplastic pollution.

Conclusion

Synthetic fabrics pose a particularly challenge due to their non-biodegradable nature. Once created, plastic persists indefinitely, disintegrating into microplastic fibres. This perpetual shedding during wear and laundering exacerbates oceanic pollution. This should be enough to challenge the domination of synthetic fibres in the fashion landscape and constitute a sufficient reason to phase out of unnecessary uses of plastic. The focus should be on creating and wearing fabrics that might cost a bit more and might not be as scalable as polyester but don’t harm the environment or our health.