How Doing The Laundry Pollutes The Environment

Most of us try and do our best by the environment.

We reuse plastic bags, we watch our water and electricity consumption and avoid using the car for super-short trips. A-list celebrities are "Flight shamed" and we worry if that long-haul trip to Thailand is the right thing to do or not..

But I hate to break it to you...

If you run a washing machine (like most of us) you might be surprised to learn the following:

Every time we do the laundry, hundreds of thousands of microplastics are released from clothes into the water. 

Scientists estimate that a single Waste Treatment Plant expels 65 million microplastic fibres into water every single day. And there are around 9,000 plants in the UK and over 14,000 in the U.S.A.

In this article, you'll discover why this happens and how we can reduce the effect doing the laundry has on the environment.

If you asked the average person what they're clothes were made out of, how many would say "Plastic"?

The fact is, a lot of modern clothes contain synthetic-fibers such as Nylon, Polyester and Acrylic. In other words - plastics.

Clothes made using synthetic plastics are quicker, cheaper and easier to make. They can also last longer. Sadly, that also applies to how long they take to degrade.

Garments made from polyester and nylon take around 40 years to degrade. To make a quick comparison, those made from wool only take one year.

Every time we put an item of clothing in the wash, it sheds thousands of fibres through pilling.

"Pills" are when very small, round fibers form on the surface of clothes.  If you've ever ironed a football shirt or school uniform they are usually easy to see. 

"Pills" are when very small, round fibres form on the surface of clothes.  If you've had a school uniform or a football shirt for a while they are usually easy to see.

Pilling happens over the course of time due to wear and tear and during the laundry process. The mechanical action of a washing machine causes friction and fibers can break and tangle together.

Eventually, the pill is pulled free and when this happens inside the washing machine, they are washed away with the water. 

Unfortunately, this is not just one or two loose fibers that are getting into the water. Scientific studies show that one garment can release over 1,900 microfibers per wash.

After microplastics enter the water in our washing machine, they are washed away and taken to a waste water treatment plant.

Waste water treatment plants have two kinds of filters - coarse screens and fine screens. Fine screens are capable of filtering out foreign objects that are between 1.5mm - 6.mm in diameter.

Sadly, this is still too big to stop a lot of microplastics, and they can pass through the filter and enter rivers, streams and our food chain.

Some of the microfibers do get caught up with the rest of the sewage sludge at the treatment plant. This sludge is disposed of as fertilizer or dumped at sea (something Surfers Against Sewage and Greenpeace has long campaigned against).

This shows that the plastic fibres from our clothes can end up pretty much anywhere. As they don't bio-degrade, they'll also be around for decades, too.

Here is a great (but disturbing) video from "The Story of Stuff" showing how they can up in everywhere and in our food chain:

A scientific-study was performed at Plymouth University to try and measure just how many fibres are released during washing.

The scientists purchased 4 sweaters from stores on the high-street. They washed the sweaters four times before beginning their experiment. Using special filters, they were able to catch the microplastics in washing machine water.

Here are their findings:

As you can see, they found hundreds of thousands of microplastic fibres being released every wash. 

What makes this even worse is they only used a 6kg washing machine! This is pretty small, and many homes in the UK have 8kg - 10kg washing machines, so the results would be much higher.

Out of all the synthetic materials tested, they found a polyester-cotton blend released the least amount of microplastics, and up to 80% less than clothes made with acrylic (found in a lot of sweaters and tracksuits).

The scientists also tested different kinds of detergents, but their results were inconclusive.

One thing they did identify as being a problem was using fabric softener. Softener was found to increase pilling and the number of fibres which broke off inside the washing machine.

The easy answer to stop microplastic pollution is to work with the apparrel industry to adopt higher safety standards for clothes.

Sadly, according to this article in the Guardian, it doesn't look like they are in a hurry to do this. I would imagine it would significantly impact their bottom line.

Also, there is a real lack of research performed in this area. The study by Plymouth University was one of the few of it's kind.

The Guardian references a 3-year European research study called "Project Mermaid". This is a European research project with the stated aim of reducing microfiber shedding by 70%.

The research was performed by a private consortium. They shared their results with the EU, but it seems any preventative measures are a while off.

In a recently released report, they are calling for more research to better understand the scope of the problem.

Some industry manufacturers are trying to come up with innovations to help solve the problem.

Until government and big business finally get round to it (if ever..) here are 6 things we as individuals can do.

Some companies are starting to produce special filters which can attach to any washing machine.

I will order one after I finish this article to show my support and hopefully report back in a future blog post.

Buying fewer clothes and wearing them for longer will help reduce microfiber shedding.

Of course, reducing the amount of laundry you do would also help. However, this could be pretty unhygienic, especially when it comes to work wear and school uniforms.

Buying fewer clothes also reduces microfiber shedding in the production process (at textile mills) and problems after old clothes have been thrown away, too.