Home Activist Alert: Selecting Clothing Made With "Natural" Fiber Can Help the Ocean
According to a study released in the Environmental Science and Technology Journal, clothing made from plastic fibers can release alarming amounts of microplastic particles into your sewer, which then find their way downstream to the ocean, contributing to the increasing challenges microplastics are creating for ocean ecosystems, and also finding their way back to your body via seafood.
" “It seems obvious in hindsight that fibers are leaving clothes in
washing machines and ending up in the waste stream, but it hadn’t been
considered as a source up until this point,” said Kara Lavender Law, a
research oceanographer at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole,
Mass. “This is eye opening.” " (from "Discovery News," http://bit.ly/rmMnTF)
This appears to be a new category of "low hanging fruit" for the workaday environmental activist. Selecting clothing constructed of natural fibers not only tends to yield a longer-lasting and more comfortable wardrobe, it helps reduce the stresses that microplastics, dies, and hydrocarbon processing place on those ecosystems that they are located within. Your decisions can and do make a difference. Consider clothing made of 100% cotton, hemp, or wool. You may just find an easy and enjoyable way to help the environment!
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