Is Your Wash Polluting the Ocean?

What are microfibres? 

Microfibres are a type of microplastic; tiny plastic fibres 5mm or less (Less than the size of a strand of hair and smaller) that are shed from synthetic clothing in your washing machine. Up to 700,000 of these plastic microfibres are released into the water system every time you wash your clothes. It’s estimated that there are 1.4 million trillion microfibres in our oceans.

Microfibres attract toxins in the oceans and are ingested by marine life. Microfibres are eaten by plankton which are at the very bottom of the food chain.

“Dr Richard Kirby, a plankton scientist from Plymouth, collected a sample of the almost-invisible planktonic creatures that are at the bottom of the marine food chain by towing a net through the water off Devon. When he placed the sample under the microscope to look at what they had been ingesting he found plastic microfibres less than two millimetres long and finer than a human hair prevalent among them”

At Cleaner Seas, we’re committed to protecting the health of our oceans and the creatures that call them home. That’s why we’ve developed our groundbreaking microfibre filter designed to capture the tiniest microplastic particles and prevent them from entering the water system.

You can help reduce the amount of microfibres released into your wash by:

• Washing less – only wash clothes when they need it. Items that are not worn close to the skin often do not need washing after just one wear. This will also prolong the life of your clothes.
• Fill up your washing machine to the max: washing a full load results in less friction between the clothes.
• Wash at a low temperature. This not only helps to reduce microplastic fibre release, but also helps to reduce CO2 emissions!
• When cleaning the dryer, do not flush the lint down the drain, throw it in the bin.
• Avoid long washing cycles as long periods of washing can cause more friction between fabrics.
• Fit a Cleaner Seas Microfibre Filter to your washing machine.