how much do cheap plastic clothes (polyester, spandex, elastic) contribute to the micro-plastics epidemic I saw on HN recently?
I've been trying to get 100% natural materials (cotton, wool, leather) and they seem more comfortable, less stuffy (especially for sleeping) but that might be a placebo.
From what I have been reading, quite a bit. The plastic lint ends up in the water ecosystem pretty quickly compared to other plastics through washing and drying, and they're not obvious being so small.
I imagine most people don't think about their plastic fabrics being plastic at all, they really don't feel like plastic. So when you see lint balls or bits of lint floating about the house you don't think to yourself "Ah, little bits of plastic going into my lungs". When you empty the lint catcher in a drier and pop it right in the bin, it probably doesn't cross most minds that it's a little bundle of plastic fibers. I like to consider myself pretty well informed on the topic and it wasn't until this year that clothing fibers even crossed my mind.
Somehow in most of the apartments I've lived the toilet was always really close to the dryer. So for many many years I would just throw everything from the lint trap into the toilet to be flushed next time I use the restroom. Without thinking about it, it seemed like 'organic' material. Probably most of it was (I tend to use the dryer mostly for towels and bedding, which is mostly cotton).
One morning it occurred to me that I've been flushing microplastics away, which is really terrible...
Catching particles coming from the wash seems like a pretty tough problem. Even if the washing machine could somehow catch these, I can't see consumers (and thus manufacturers) jumping at the chance to clean out dirty soapy goop from a washing machine filter... which I imagine will resemble cleaning out a shower drain trap pretty quickly.
It’s also really bad for the pipes. There’s a reason why toilet paper falls apart pretty quickly when it gets wet. Generally only waste, water, and toilet paper should go down that drain, unless you want to make some plumber very happy.
Even if they did clean it out, they would probably put it in the trash anyway. Some cities could process it in their recycling process, but that's not every city. I don't think there is a way for us to have plastic fabrics without the microplastics ending up in the environment.
>I've been trying to get 100% natural materials (cotton, wool, leather) and they seem more comfortable, less stuffy (especially for sleeping) but that might be a placebo.
Natural materials are obviously more comfortable, more breathable, hypoallergenic, etc. These fabrics are literally the product of millions of years of evolution for putting on top of an animal's skin, and work well with its physiology.
Uh, pretty sure cotton didn't evolve to fix that for animals.
There's of course significant processing applied to those materials before they're suitable as clothing (cotton obviously needs to be picked, it's not on an animal to begin with; leather needs to be tanned).
Lots of people are allergic to wool. Perhaps as much as a quarter to a half of the population will have a mild allergic reaction if they have ordinary coarse wool rubbing against their skin for a long time, like wearing a woollen collar or scarf while trudging through the snow all day. Some people can recognise whether fabric contains wool just by touching it with their fingertips: an immediate itching sensation. So perhaps it evolved for use by sheep, not humans?
Looks like it’s closer to 6% [1]. A lot of people self-diagnose wool allergies, but they really just get crappy wool, or they mistake itchiness caused by the coarseness of the material for an allergy. It’s an easy mistake to make, but it’s unfair to call it an allergy.
Huh? They're obviously optimized for regulating the temperature of the animal they came from. Except for cotton and linen. And they weren't woven. Viscose is pretty comfortable, but it's not a natural fiber. Fiber blends are pretty amazing, too. There's some interesting properties you can get with blends.
I've been trying to get 100% natural materials (cotton, wool, leather) and they seem more comfortable, less stuffy (especially for sleeping) but that might be a placebo.