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Did you know that every week each of us consumes about a credit card sized amount of plastic? That is 5 grams worth that we breathe in and swallow in the form of microplastics every week and about 260 grams every year! And it may actually be more since we don’t yet know the full extent of microplastics in our food and environment. These small plastics that are less than 5mm in size work their way into our water in a variety of ways, and a large contributor is clothing.
Surprised? I was. Until recently, I didn’t make the connection between synthetic materials and plastic, but that is exactly what they are. The plastic fibers are woven into clothing, cleaning cloths, and a number of other items that you may commonly use. The issue with these microfibers is that they shed from the material, especially during washing, and make their way into our water system. A polyester garment will release almost 500,000 fibers and an acrylic garment will release more than 700,000 fibers from just one wash!! Most are too small to be filtered out of the water with regular equipment so that means these microplastics are dumped back into the water supply or into oceans or streams. When you turn on the tap or even drink from bottled water you are drinking in plastics. When you eat animals or marine life that have ingested plastic, you get the plastic too (see the 90 day challenge logo background above for an example of what microplastics look like). The scary thing is that we don’t know the health implications. So what are we to do about this? Don’t fret! You can start by reading clothing labels.
Today’s challenge: Familiarize yourself with the names of natural and plastic fabrics. Don’t purge your closet yet. We’ll peek inside there at the end of the week.
Natural fabrics (choose these):
- Cotton
- Bamboo
- Silk
- Wool
- Cashmere
- Denim
- Linen
- Hemp
- Rayon (semi-synthetic)*
- Modal (semi-synthetic)*
- Lyocell (semi-synthetic)*
Plastic fabrics (avoid these):
- Polyester
- Nylon
- Organza
- Acrylic
- Spandex
- Elastane
*These materials are made from cellulose or other wood pulps such as beech trees. They are semi-synthetic because they are highly treated with chemicals. So although they don’t contain plastic they are not good for the environment in other ways. I did not even include viscose on the list because it is more toxic than the others and I prefer to avoid it. You can read more about the production and problems with viscose here.
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