Note that cotton clothes leave exactly 0 microplastics no matter how much water is used to wash them. Prevention is still the best cure - just stop buying plastic clothes. Kind of like how the way to adapt to the Roman habit of sweetening wine with lead and then serving in lead dish ware was to not drink leaded wine and eat out of wooden or other dish ware.
We still have to demonstrate that the choice to go cotton to avoid micro plastic release outweighs the tremendous water use that goes with cotton agriculture - water use that occurs in some of the most water scarce areas of the world.
And unless we're going organic consider the impacts of eutrophication and other chemical discharge/byproducts.
There isn't a silver bullet in material sustainability besides non-consumption. And we usually don't know (or agree) enough to weigh externalities against each other.
Its important that we study, assess, and (hopefully) mitigate the release/impact of micro plastics because their isn't a plausible path toward the textile product's industry to reduce it's carbon footprint in line with the UNFCCC without relying on recycled polyester.
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[ 518 ms ] story [ 760 ms ] threadAnd unless we're going organic consider the impacts of eutrophication and other chemical discharge/byproducts.
There isn't a silver bullet in material sustainability besides non-consumption. And we usually don't know (or agree) enough to weigh externalities against each other.
Its important that we study, assess, and (hopefully) mitigate the release/impact of micro plastics because their isn't a plausible path toward the textile product's industry to reduce it's carbon footprint in line with the UNFCCC without relying on recycled polyester.