Use a microfibre bag
Keep your laundry low impact
Your Challenge
When washing your laundry, use a microfibre bag to collect polluting microplastics. Washing clothes sheds fabric fibres – known as microfibres. Microfibre bags, such as GuppyFriend, collect some of these microplastics in their meshes. They can then be scooped out in a clump and placed in your rubbish bin, but make sure you keep your microfibre bag and reuse it! These bags are available to buy on our online shop.
Other options include a filter you can fit to the wastewater pipe on your washing machine, to catch the fibres as they head down the drain. The filter can be emptied every month or so and clumps of fibres placed in the bin.
Alternatively, you can buy microfibre balls which go in the washing machine and catch microfibres as they tumble around the washing machine.
Why you're doing this
A lot of the clothes we wear are made of plastics like polyester and nylon. Each time we wash them, these materials shed microfibres – tiny pieces of plastic, thinner than a strand of hair. Some of these fibres are so small they can drain out of our washing machines and pass straight through wastewater treatment plants into the sea.
Even though all fabrics shed fibres, synthetic fibres can have a lasting impact on the environment as they take longer to degrade than organic fibres such as cotton[1] and break down into smaller microplastics which are then ingested by wildlife and continue to degrade and release toxic chemicals into the organisms that have eaten them.[2]
When we wash our clothes, wastewater is transported through the sewage system to treatment facilities, where up to 92% of fibres are filtered and disposed of as ‘sludge’.[3] But not all microfibres are captured during this process. Globally, an estimated 200-500,000 tonnes of microfibres are released into the ocean every year.[4]
Despite this, not enough is currently known about the long-term impacts of microplastics on marine ecosystems, or on human health.
How you'll make a difference
Bagging up your clothes before you wash them, or adding a microfibre collection ball, can help reduce the amount of microplastics sneaking into our waterways and ending up in the ocean.
Track your progress
in the My Footprint App
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