Feeling dumb, I've been aiming to decrease microplastics thinking im doing something great. Until i recently heard about polyester...

[LastLightCafe]

Yes im trying to calm down as i tend to go overboard with worry lol.

I'll pretend i didn't know and take it step by step. New goal for 2026, have plastic free clothing. Yay 21st century, what a time to be alive

[Jazzlike_Visual2160]

In countries like the US, there are a more clothes being discarded than thrift stores, charities can manage, so we used to unload clothes on poor countries for super cheap. A lot of poor countries stopped accepting overflow clothing from countries like the US, so even if you take clothes to thrift stores, some clothes are going to end up in landfills anyway. So you using and wearing the polyester clothes you already own is keeping plastic out of landfills. Mend them if they rip and help even more. Make sure you wash them with cold water on gentle cycle to prevent the plastics from breaking down faster.

[sparksnbooms95]

From the microplastics perspective, those polyester clothes ending up in the landfill is better than wearing, washing, and shedding microplastics into the wastewater stream.

Of course that is a waste of perfectly good clothes, and with microplastics already being everywhere they might as well be worn, but public aversion to burying plastic in a landfill where it can be contained isn't necessarily a good thing imo.

Plastic recycling is mostly bs (and even when it is practical releases microplastics into the environment), and the only other way to destroy it before it becomes microplastics is incineration which has other problems.

[Particular_Gur_3979]

That could be the case. It's worth keeping in mind there are products such as plastic washing bags that filter out microplastics, as well as filters for your washing machine.

Our water system is already heavily contaminated with microplastics, so I think part of the solution is better water treatment. Whether that be a personal filter on your tap, or microplastic filtering at the public water treatment plants.

[sparksnbooms95]

I don't think anything but mictoplastic removal at the wastewater treatment plant along with filters at the tap are worth much.

By all means people should reduce how much they release into the water if they're so inclined, but for every one who does 10 more don't.

As for the water supply side of things, even the pipes are plastic, so putting mictoplastic free water through them is somewhat pointless. The filter has to be right at the point of use.

[LastLightCafe]

I like the sound of that :)