Featured Image Credit: Peter Charaf / Raceforwater
By Emily Persico
Microplastics are spreading from pole to pole, polluting our oceans, and poisoning our food supply as they accumulate up the food chain. Yet, most of us don’t really understand what microplastics are or where they come from. Thanks to Canadian outfitter Mountain Equipment Co-op’s $50,000 grant, however, we will soon be learning much more.
Remember those little plastic beads that you used to find in your toothpastes and face washes? Well, those are microplastics. Many of them were banned over a year ago in the United States, allowing consumers to relax a little when choosing hygiene products. Still, the problem of microplastics persists in a form we will not soon do away with—our clothing.
“Home washing machines don’t have filters or catchments to grab those small fibers which are coming off garments when you’re washing them,” says Jeff Crook, Mountain Co-op’s Chief Product Officer.
When we do laundry, thousands (and sometimes hundreds of thousands, depending on the material) of plastic microfibers are pulled from our clothes and released into the environment with each and every load. Although these fibers are microscopic, they make a substantial impact. In two separate studies done on the subject, 90% of debris found in lakes and oceans and 85% of human debris onshore were microfibers.
Mountain Co-op hopes to change all of this by funding a microfibers research project directed by the Vancouver Aquarium. They are hopeful that new knowledge on the subject will help transform both clothing consumers and producers into better stewards of the environment.
“If we better understand the type of fibers that we are getting into the water system, we can go back up the supply chain and we can work with those factory partners of ours to try to find way to lock the fabrics down more so that they don’t release fiber,” explains Crook.
Hopefully, this one year study between Mountain Co-op and Vancouver Aquarium will shed some light on the problem of microfibers. In the meantime, find out what you can do to help minimize microplastic pollution.