Handwashing can drastically cut the amount of fibres shed compared to washing clothes with a machine, new research has found.
- Although many studies show microfibres are released during machine washing, it's been less clear how hand washing contributes.
- The researchers wanted to systematically investigate microplastic fibre release from synthetic textiles with different methods of hand washing in contrast to machine washing.
The Study: The findings have been published in the journal ACS Environmental Science & Technology Water, a publication of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
- The researchers were Chunhui Wang, Weikun Chen, Hongting Zhao, Junhong Tang, Gang Li, Qian Zhou, Jingtao Sun, and Baoshan Xing.
The Backdrop: When clothing made from plastic fibres, such as polyester and nylon, are laundered, the fabric sheds microscopic fibres that eventually end up in wastewater and the environment.
- Though researchers have investigated the amount and types of microplastic fibres shed while laundering clothing, most studies have focused on washing machines.
- In many countries, however, it is still common to manually launder clothing.
- A team had previously reported on the effects of washing fabric by hand, but the study was not comprehensive.
What the Researchers Did: The researchers cleaned two types of fabric swatches made from 100% polyester and a 95% polyester–5% spandex blend with hand washing methods and a washing machine. They found that:
- Manual methods released far fewer fibres. For example, the 100% polyester fabric shed an average of 1,853 microplastic pieces during hand washing compared with an average of 23,723 pieces from the same fabric that was machine laundered.
- By weight, machine laundering released over five times more microplastics than the traditional method.
- The fibres released from handwashing tended to be longer.
- Adding detergent, pre-soaking the fabrics and using a washboard increased the number of released fibres with manual methods, but still not to the same extent as using a machine.
- In contrast, they found that temperature, detergent type, wash time and the amount of water used had no meaningful effects on the amount of microplastics shed while hand washing.
