Synthetic clothing fibers contribute vast amounts of plastic pollution on land

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“The unprecedented plastic waste tide plaguing our oceans and shores, can become as limited as our chosen relationship with plastics, which involves a dramatic behavioral change on our part…”
Captions and Photo: © SAF — Coastal Care

Excerpts;

176,500 metric tons of synthetic microfibers—chiefly polyester and nylon—are released every year onto terrestrial environments across the globe, according to a new study in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Jenna Gavigan and colleagues at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

The microfibers are shed from clothing during washing, and the amount ending up on land now exceeds the amount that enters waterbodies…

Read Full Article, PhysOrg (09-16-2020)

The world is paying a high price for cheap clothes; CNN (05-03-2020)

More than ever, our clothes are made of plastic. Just washing them can pollute the oceans; VOX (09-21-2018)

Video captures moment plastic enters food chain, BBC News (03-11-2017)
A scientist has filmed the moment plastic microfibre is ingested by plankton, illustrating how the material is affecting life beneath the waves. The footage shows one way that plastic waste could be entering the marine and global food chain…

Plastic Pollution: When The Mermaids Cry, The Great Plastic Tide, Coastal Care
Washed out on our coasts in obvious and clearly visible form, the plastic pollution spectacle blatantly unveiling on our beaches is only the prelude of the greater story that unfolded further away in the world’s oceans, yet mostly originating from where we stand: the land…

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