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In waters is consistently about a third from tires and a third from synthetic textiles (bcs washing).
Eg
What the hell is "city dust"?
Of course the 2% contributor has been addressed, personal care products now aren't allowed to have plastic "abrasives", which is a good change anyway as plastic is useless for improving scrubbing
No other sources have had any work done to mitigate the problem
Lol, yeah, my toothpaste really doesn't need plastic glitter. Then again, neither does my car's paint, but here we are.
Glitter in paint is usually the mineral Mica.
It depends what kind of reflections they go for (in usually polyurethane or acrylic paint?), there is a lot of variety.
Aluminium, bronze, mica, synthetic, glass/ceramic are all used today in various forms and look fairly different.
“City dust” oh yea. The cities that walk everywhere? What’s the dust from?
I'm just assuming they mean cocaine and not like slowly decaying trash.
I'd like to see the numbers, but I imagine that the synthetic textiles chunk comes from the sheer volume of fast-fashion and trashion produced every year. I have synthetic shirts that are well over a decade old and still look and function as brand new. My cotton shirts under similar wear get ratty and frayed in that time frame (and require harsh chemicals for stains).
If we stopped over-washing and over production, I wouldn't be surprised if the lifetime ecological footprint of synthetic garments is less than a cotton equivalent.
i would imagine most comes from shedding of the fabrics in regular use and washing+drying, basically the rate is mostly constant fast fashion or not. I would think the only viable solution would be limiting/stopping or finding alternatives to synthetic fibers. Also perhaps some kind of microplastic filter in washing machine outlets mandated by regulation could be a way to limit the emissions of new microplastics.
So... Cotton/Linen/Wool? The technology is fine, its only downside in most applications is simply cost. Cotton clothes are more comfortable, less stinky, less polluting, and won't fuse with your skin and disfigure you for life if they accidentally catch on fire. On top of not making microplastics soup every wash cycle.
If we cared to actually solve the problem of plastics in fast fashion we could ban them, with some exceptions for sportswear and shoes where synthetics have some actually useful uses. Hell, we could even make it an easy transition by gradually pulling back the allowable synthetic content for x years.
But it would directly kneecap Shein and H&M's business model so we have to weigh all the pros against that.
There's also Hemp. And Lyocell, which is made from cellulose (Sourced from trees or bamboo).
And yeah nice fully cotton clothes can be pricey. The upside is that they're generally much higher quality and very comfy. Annoyingly it is very common for stuff to be labeled "100% cotton" yet still be cotton/poly mix so always check the fabric breakdown on tags or website fine print.
I'm sure would find equivalent non-polluting alternative materials within a couple of years if we banned all plastics ("synthetic textiles").
But only if we actually put the ban in place.
Otherwise the answer is never.
Yes, this is how I understand it too, it's not like half of your shirt ends up in the ocean (and the amount of plastics that ends up in the landfills isn't really included in the microplastics that circle around - that's a problem for the future - so the vomit-inducing fast fashion/consumerism is a bigger problem from every other standpoint).
And yes again on the only viable solution - it's stupid to try to slightly improve something you are gonna be producing more of every year. The "improvements" are just propaganda we are (successfully) fed for decades & it just muddies the discussions whilst keeping the current/same profiteers in power (without even changing the business model).
Last year I looked for a filter for my washer, and found a lot of inconsistencies and hocus pocus.
This year it’s really hitting me how ratty my cotton t-shirts from pandemic look, especially compared to the rayon blend t-shirts from the same time. If the cotton is heavier and bulkier, doesn’t last as long, needs tons of water…. Is it really better?
My decade old plastic shirts have faded, the linen ones last better, but yeah, they stain (and I'm not going to test them with plastic coatings to improve stain resistance!). I only get bold colours, so my pastel shirts are very faded
What is the data source for this chart?
Wow tires might as well be almost half
Not sure what city dust is composed of but imagining some of it is tires
City dust is everything that's not covered by the other categories, e.g. car-related pollutants like paint or wear of brake pads, but mainly I guess packaging materials and plastic film as they seem not to be included in the other categories.
You don't have a good idea to replace synthetics in textiles, do you? I can't stand cotton shirts, but I would really like to skip synthetics.
If you live somewhere cold – wool.
If you live somewhere hot – linen.
I think I have to give linen a second chance. Or maybe modal/lycocell/etc. Germany isn't sub Saharan warm, but I'm built like an oven 😐
Edit: oh, this is why I gave up on them. I'm not paying 85€ for a single shirt
Keep an eye out at thrift shops, maybe? I assume those exist near you. Probably much less availability that way, so you might have to look for a while, and fewer pattern options as a result, but cheaper and for a test maybe better because already pre-softened through wash and wear?
Bamboo? I have bamboo socks that are warm and soft, but they take a little extra to dry
I tried, but it was really hard finding good quality. It shrunk to show my soft, rosy belly 😐
Right now I'm wearing a wool shirt under a linen shirt. I'd count the local weather as "warm"
Yeah, wool is good in hot weather as well. Especially since it very effectively combats body odor. I was just trying to give a rule of thumb.
If we banned plastics (gutting their lobbies affecting everything from taxes, laws/regulation, logistics, etc) we would have natural replacements in like 5 years & nobody would even think of the times before (except for environmental cleanup purposes).
They said you can't have water-tight bags from non-fossil fuel sauces, now they are everywhere. The paper industry just like developed see-through water-tight "paper" (the lil windows in envelopes & some packaging) bcs they didn't want to deal with the petrol industry.
The non-plastic drinking straws? Yeah, explain to me why they intentionally sux even tho we always had the materials for a seamless transition?
(Also, just in case an fyi - cotton, like wool, can be processed and woven if very much different ways which makes for basically divergent materials, it's a whole science. The mainstream stuff is mostly the same tho.)
The fact that some paper straws perform as well as plastic suggests that the bad ones are just cheaper and are used by companies that don't care. When I used to drink the sort of drinks that use straws I carried a steel straw to use in places that didn't supply good straws
Yeah, logistics are hard & I imagine a small bar/café doesn't have the (kind of?) staff to think about straws or where else to search for the ones that don't fill costumes with nasty shit - they just pick whatever their usual supplier has on offer so it's less paperwork.
And it's not like anyone blamed them for shitty straws anyway.
some people are allergic to cotton, because of lanolin produced by sheep that is aprt of the wool, people are allergic to it. polyester also can cause rashes in some people.
Uh.. Cotton is not wool.
People wore animal and plant based clothing for hundreds of thousands of years
And I can't stand how it feels. Cotton feels sweaty all the time and wool is just too warm. I'm starting to wear sweaters when temperatures hit single digits (Celsius) and jackets when below zero. I'm not made for warm and friendly. I need breathable. Cotton sucks here.
Get yourself a merino wool base layer shirt, like a thin one not sweater thick. It'll be surprisingly cool.
Try hemp or bamboo fibre (has different names like rayon, tencel, lyocell).
You could try different thicknesses of cotton and see how it feels. Or cotton blended with the other materials. Some companies list their shirts as lightweight or heavyweight or give cloth weight in gsm (grams per square meter) or oz (ounces per square yard). A lightweight and oversized shirt will be good in the heat.
I'll try that. Thank you.
The opposite for me, synthetic clothing makes me sweat like a bastard, I try to only buy 100% cotton shirts and stuff
Strange. But I'm dripping in that stuff.
I live in Australia and I wear 100% cotton very regularly, including summer. It was 39° today and I've been wearing a cotton shirt all day.
It certainly does not feel sweaty all the time.
Good thing how you perceive the world is how everyone perceives it. Thanks for helping me understand I don't know how I feel.
You're totally right, your perception is valid and should be fair to share, and mine should not. Put another way - where did I say your feelings are wrong, or that my perspective is universal.
I hate seeing natural clothing fibres being slandered, especially under an article talking about how we're choking the planet with microplastics.. Seems like a good time to point out I have the opposite experience.
Your last sentence certainly doesn't look like you were appreciating my point of view, but I might be wrong on this. Anyway, I won't put too much of care into that discussion. Sorry for being snarky.
Have you tried Rayon? It's a semi synthetic fabric made from cellulose and iirc biodegradades decently.
This is a really good point. Most of my synthetics clothes have been made of a rayon blend, so maybe they were not so bad after all.
This would be an excellent point to clarify.
I have never heard of this, but I will have a look. Thanks for the suggestion.
Hemp.
I'm interested, but I wasn't able to find a shirt yet. I have to keep digging.