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Clothing industry has somehow gotten by unscathed during all the environmental awareness that has spread in the past 20 years. I am pretty sure clothes are the

Clothing industry has somehow gotten by unscathed during all the environmental awareness that has spread in the past 20 years. I am pretty sure clothes are the #1 cause of the microplastics that have inundated the ocean and our water supply. We have been heavily pushed to drive less, recycle more, and use less water, but I have not seen messaging about not buying new clothes you don't need.

schiffern 2y ago
The problem isn't really "buying new clothes," since most of the microplastics are released in the laundry. Sewage treatment plants aren't designed to remove them, so they get released with the discharge water. It can also clog up septic leachfields. They do make purpose-built products to filter microplastic lint from laundry[1][2], but a more hacker approach is to just search for "pool filter." I wish they made comparable products for the dryer. [1] https://www.filtrol.net/ https://www.filtrol.net/ [2] https://planetcare.org/ https://planetcare.org/
- onlypassingthru 2y ago
  > I wish they made comparable products for the dryer. Isn't that just the lint filter? Every dryer I've seen has one.
  - kyleee 2y ago
    Those are probably not fine enough (in terms of filtration) and retrofit may be difficult if it restricts airflow.
haccount 2y ago
There's an entire big and celebrated business sector that spends every working hour taking intact plastic products and grinds then into fine shreds, a process likely to contribute more than a fair share to microplastic dissemination. Maybe worth investigating, a good candidate for more microplastic release than the clothing industry. Name of that business sector? Plastics recycling.
- arcticbull 2y ago
  Plastics recycling also kinda barely exists. Only 5% of plastic in the US is recycled, the whole thing was a greenwashing operation by oil companies to encourage additional consumption. Realistically putting the plastic deep underground back from whence the hydrocarbons came is not a bad sequestration strategy. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...
  - brnt 2y ago
    The US is at the back of the pack though, in Europe some countries recycle more than half of plastic.
    - redwall_hp 2y ago
      Same for aluminum, which is highly recyclable. A ridiculous amount of it ends up in landfills for no reason other than people can't be fucked. Plastic recycling is just another American "we tried nothing and are out of ideas." Much of the lack of recycling for plastics, when it comes to bottles, isn't some grand conspiracy so much as people just throwing bottles in the trash or on the side of the road, because: * There aren't omnipresent recycling bins to go alongside trash cans. * There aren't local programs for recycling pick up. * Some people can't be bothered and the government isn't punching them in the face, as it should. Only a half dozen states have a can/bottle deposit, even. Each state should be required to have deposits and municipal recycling pickup in any city of appreciable size, and heavy penalties for littering, or all sorts of federal funding should be withheld.
      - mistrial9 2y ago
        > Plastic recycling is just another American "we tried nothing and are out of ideas." not sure where this comes from -- this statement is definitely not accurate. Is recycling of plastics "going well" ? no. Please note that USA is composed of States, and then Counties. In the USA law system, counties have the most jurisdiction over most waste laws. Some State laws override those, including toxics handling; then Federal laws including interstate commerce (transportation) and many more toxics regulations. Counties do vary dramatically. In fact most counties in the whole USA are different in important respects. There is no single USA this way. Overall, recycling is very dependent on economics. It costs money to recycle, and sometimes you get some of it back on materials markets. The costs to the environment are not accurate with respect to markets. The comment then proceeds to dictate advice to "each state" and that is never going to happen, by definition, for legal matters under the jurisdiction of states, in simple terms.
jerlam 2y ago
France passed a law back in 2020 to require new washing machines to have a microplastics filter by 2025: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2020-001371_EN.html https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2020-00137... It has also begun to subsidize the clothing repair industry: https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/13/business/france-shoe-clothing-repairs-scli-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/13/business/france-shoe-clothing...
- klipt 2y ago
  Maybe we should subsidize plastic-free fibers instead. Cotton, hemp, wool...
  - bilbo0s 2y ago
    You still have massive downsides to new cotton or wool clothes. There's just less of the micro plastic downside. Clothing is just a place where we take a massive hit on everything from carbon output to micro plastics. Another issue is clothing repair. I think the clothing repair thing is kind of brilliant. But for clothing repair to work you would need to disincentivize buying new clothes. Which subsidizing clothing would work against.
    - pkaye 2y ago
      Higher quality clothes like in the past might be nice. Stuff seems to fall apart so quickly these days.
      - ffujdefvjg 2y ago
        Older clothes weren't just made better, people also took care of them better. Partly because of cost, but also culture -- fewer changes in fashion trends with slower and more local communication, cheap labor to launder your clothes by hand (which puts much less wear on the garment). Also a culture of repairing and mending (also easier to do this when you have fewer things to occupy your free time).
andai 2y ago
>not buying new clothes you don't need Pretty sure I don't need the ones made of microplastics!
throwaway19972 2y ago
> We have been heavily pushed to drive less, recycle more, and use less water, but I have not seen messaging about not buying new clothes you don't need. It's there if you follow the right people on social media. Campaigns that center around personal responsibility, however, aren't ever going to work, and there's obvious reasons why people are willing to pay to push this narrative but not the buying fewer clothes one (at least here in the US).
- stephen_g 2y ago
  It hardly moves the needle - apart from often needing huge amounts of awareness education that busy people hardly have time to think about, there usually aren’t enough affordable alternative options for ‘personal responsibility’ to work, but when you regulate to reduce the sale of the bad stuff it just forces it to happen. Often regulation forces better alternatives to reach the scale where economy of scale can make it affordable, whereas with the ‘personal responsibility’ model the alternatives will often just stay the far more expensive, premium option.
smm11 2y ago
Vintage clothing stores are a great resource to combat this. It's sad how expensive many are, but you can also try thrift stores for clothes.
jabl 2y ago
> Clothing industry has somehow gotten by unscathed during all the environmental awareness that has spread in the past 20 years. I am pretty sure clothes are the #1 cause of the microplastics that have inundated the ocean and our water supply. Surprise surprise, it has actually been studied. One recent review article of the field: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl2746 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl2746 From figure 2b) we can see that while microplastics from synthetic fibres are certainly an issue, they are far from #1. Dwarfed by tires, paint, and macroplastics (large plastic pieces thrown away slowly grinding down into microplastics e.g. by wave action).
- calf 2y ago
  Pretty sure PP was referring to mainstream criticism and concerns which tend to be about plastics in foods, etc. but less acknowledgement of the problem of fast fashion switching from cotton to plastic based textiles.
rustcleaner 2y ago
With luck, maybe some new nudity tolerance movements can be fomented. :^D
SlightlyLeftPad 2y ago
Oh no, I love my lululemon clothes. New fear unlocked. It makes sense though, these clothes still generate lint and it can only be thousands of synthetic particles and dirt.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

schiffern 2y ago

The problem isn't really "buying new clothes," since most of the microplastics are released in the laundry. Sewage treatment plants aren't designed to remove them, so they get released with the discharge water. It can also clog up septic leachfields. They do make purpose-built products to filter microplastic lint from laundry[1][2], but a more hacker approach is to just search for "pool filter." I wish they made comparable products for the dryer. [1] https://www.filtrol.net/ https://www.filtrol.net/ [2] https://planetcare.org/ https://planetcare.org/

onlypassingthru 2y ago
> I wish they made comparable products for the dryer. Isn't that just the lint filter? Every dryer I've seen has one.
- kyleee 2y ago
  Those are probably not fine enough (in terms of filtration) and retrofit may be difficult if it restricts airflow.

haccount 2y ago

There's an entire big and celebrated business sector that spends every working hour taking intact plastic products and grinds then into fine shreds, a process likely to contribute more than a fair share to microplastic dissemination. Maybe worth investigating, a good candidate for more microplastic release than the clothing industry. Name of that business sector? Plastics recycling.

arcticbull 2y ago
Plastics recycling also kinda barely exists. Only 5% of plastic in the US is recycled, the whole thing was a greenwashing operation by oil companies to encourage additional consumption. Realistically putting the plastic deep underground back from whence the hydrocarbons came is not a bad sequestration strategy. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...
- brnt 2y ago
  The US is at the back of the pack though, in Europe some countries recycle more than half of plastic.
  - redwall_hp 2y ago
    Same for aluminum, which is highly recyclable. A ridiculous amount of it ends up in landfills for no reason other than people can't be fucked. Plastic recycling is just another American "we tried nothing and are out of ideas." Much of the lack of recycling for plastics, when it comes to bottles, isn't some grand conspiracy so much as people just throwing bottles in the trash or on the side of the road, because: * There aren't omnipresent recycling bins to go alongside trash cans. * There aren't local programs for recycling pick up. * Some people can't be bothered and the government isn't punching them in the face, as it should. Only a half dozen states have a can/bottle deposit, even. Each state should be required to have deposits and municipal recycling pickup in any city of appreciable size, and heavy penalties for littering, or all sorts of federal funding should be withheld.
    - mistrial9 2y ago
      > Plastic recycling is just another American "we tried nothing and are out of ideas." not sure where this comes from -- this statement is definitely not accurate. Is recycling of plastics "going well" ? no. Please note that USA is composed of States, and then Counties. In the USA law system, counties have the most jurisdiction over most waste laws. Some State laws override those, including toxics handling; then Federal laws including interstate commerce (transportation) and many more toxics regulations. Counties do vary dramatically. In fact most counties in the whole USA are different in important respects. There is no single USA this way. Overall, recycling is very dependent on economics. It costs money to recycle, and sometimes you get some of it back on materials markets. The costs to the environment are not accurate with respect to markets. The comment then proceeds to dictate advice to "each state" and that is never going to happen, by definition, for legal matters under the jurisdiction of states, in simple terms.

jerlam 2y ago

France passed a law back in 2020 to require new washing machines to have a microplastics filter by 2025: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2020-001371_EN.html https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2020-00137... It has also begun to subsidize the clothing repair industry: https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/13/business/france-shoe-clothing-repairs-scli-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/13/business/france-shoe-clothing...

klipt 2y ago
Maybe we should subsidize plastic-free fibers instead. Cotton, hemp, wool...
- bilbo0s 2y ago
  You still have massive downsides to new cotton or wool clothes. There's just less of the micro plastic downside. Clothing is just a place where we take a massive hit on everything from carbon output to micro plastics. Another issue is clothing repair. I think the clothing repair thing is kind of brilliant. But for clothing repair to work you would need to disincentivize buying new clothes. Which subsidizing clothing would work against.
  - pkaye 2y ago
    Higher quality clothes like in the past might be nice. Stuff seems to fall apart so quickly these days.
    - ffujdefvjg 2y ago
      Older clothes weren't just made better, people also took care of them better. Partly because of cost, but also culture -- fewer changes in fashion trends with slower and more local communication, cheap labor to launder your clothes by hand (which puts much less wear on the garment). Also a culture of repairing and mending (also easier to do this when you have fewer things to occupy your free time).

andai 2y ago

>not buying new clothes you don't need Pretty sure I don't need the ones made of microplastics!

throwaway19972 2y ago

> We have been heavily pushed to drive less, recycle more, and use less water, but I have not seen messaging about not buying new clothes you don't need. It's there if you follow the right people on social media. Campaigns that center around personal responsibility, however, aren't ever going to work, and there's obvious reasons why people are willing to pay to push this narrative but not the buying fewer clothes one (at least here in the US).

stephen_g 2y ago
It hardly moves the needle - apart from often needing huge amounts of awareness education that busy people hardly have time to think about, there usually aren’t enough affordable alternative options for ‘personal responsibility’ to work, but when you regulate to reduce the sale of the bad stuff it just forces it to happen. Often regulation forces better alternatives to reach the scale where economy of scale can make it affordable, whereas with the ‘personal responsibility’ model the alternatives will often just stay the far more expensive, premium option.

smm11 2y ago

Vintage clothing stores are a great resource to combat this. It's sad how expensive many are, but you can also try thrift stores for clothes.

jabl 2y ago

> Clothing industry has somehow gotten by unscathed during all the environmental awareness that has spread in the past 20 years. I am pretty sure clothes are the #1 cause of the microplastics that have inundated the ocean and our water supply. Surprise surprise, it has actually been studied. One recent review article of the field: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl2746 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl2746 From figure 2b) we can see that while microplastics from synthetic fibres are certainly an issue, they are far from #1. Dwarfed by tires, paint, and macroplastics (large plastic pieces thrown away slowly grinding down into microplastics e.g. by wave action).

calf 2y ago
Pretty sure PP was referring to mainstream criticism and concerns which tend to be about plastics in foods, etc. but less acknowledgement of the problem of fast fashion switching from cotton to plastic based textiles.

rustcleaner 2y ago

With luck, maybe some new nudity tolerance movements can be fomented. :^D

SlightlyLeftPad 2y ago

Oh no, I love my lululemon clothes. New fear unlocked. It makes sense though, these clothes still generate lint and it can only be thousands of synthetic particles and dirt.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]