Day 27 - Even the clothes too!?

Day 27

So you might be thinking, oh she's going to mention trying to buy clothes without the little plastic tags on them, maybe finding ones with fabric tags tied on with string? Actually that is the least of our worries where clothes are concerned!
After a small amount of research I have recently found that the single biggest problem for plastics in the environment/ in our seas actually derives from microfibers which comes from our poor clothing choices. Polyester, nylon, acrylic or elastane/spandex clothes are all made up of small microfibers of plastic that most of us (me up until recently) wouldn't have even guessed were a problem. According to research, a single piece of synthetic clothing can release 1,900 microfibers each time that it is washed, and once washed this then makes its way down the drains and into our waterways, making it into our rivers, lakes and then the ocean. Ecologist Mark Browne released a paper back in 2011 warning of his findings of how many of these microfibers are making their way into our water bodies and how dangerous they are to our environment and our lives in the future.

Below is an extract from an article by Abigail Barrows regarding the plastic clothing issues and shows some alarming statistics into the true nature of the problem, and how much of these can be attributed to clothing.

Unfortunately the plastics business within the clothing industry seems to be an integral part of day to day manufacturing, but there are still some ways of potentially getting around this issue. If you opt in for natural fibers such as cotton, wool, hemp, silk and bamboo then generally these clothes will usually last you longer because they won't be shedding a tonne of plastic which would degrade the material over time and you wouldn't be contributing to the microfibers entering our environment unnecessarily. However generally more sustainable clothing can be expensive, depending on where you go, but it is possible if you shop around to find clothes that aren't ridiculously expensive and especially if you surf the sales. Two other options to overcome this problem, one is shopping in charity shops (not everyone likes them, but i have never had a problem with this) you can look for natural fiber materials and get a decent price on some pretty decent clothes. Option number 2 is not for everyone, (and not exactly one that i would currently be very good at) but making your own clothes would ensure you can get the materials you require plastic free and you would have your own custom items of clothes to wear. I'm considering trying to find a course that'll teach me in these ways, so I can in future try my hand at my very own clothes design, but this would take some time and trial and error. So for now i think i'll be sticking with trying to source cotton and natural clothing.

As well as this, there are companies trying to create clothes out of 100% recycled plastics from our ocean debris, however I'm not happy with this, because it seems to me that this isn't helping the cause it is just dealing with the aftermath. That piece of clothing will then shed more microfibers into the ocean, and once the clothing is no longer usable it will then inevitably end up in the environment again. More pressure should be put on government to reduce the plastics within all of our industries including the clothing one, because if you don't get to the source of the issue, then the demand will keep rising and it will be ever harder to reduce these in the future.

A shocking revelation and not one I expected to find, but that is what this journey has been all about!

Until next time.

Thanks for reading.