Delicate wash cycles release more microfibres | Hacker News Reader

Delicate wash cycles release more microfibres

phys.org

64 pointslelf54 comments

If agitation is actually the main mechanism for breaking off microfibers, with the greater volume of water in a delicate wash just helping to float them away, then could it be that a normal cycle does break off more microfibers after all, but they enter the environment during drying or everyday wear instead?

And if that's the case, are they more dangerous in water, where they might enter digestive systems, or in air, where they might enter lungs?

> In fact, they found that on average, 800,000 more fibres were released in a delicate wash than a standard cycle.

Absolutely hopeless article. It makes a huge difference whether the number of fibers released in a standard cycle is 1k or 20M. It's the ratio between the two cycles that matters. Article doesn't mention that.

No link to the paper either.

Wouldn't it be better advice to avoid buying synthetic fabric clothes, as much as possible?

Yes but it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so. Clothing that was 100% cotton in the past now has a bit of spandex or other synthetic to give it a stretch.

Especially if you are looking for functional clothing. I am not fond of the idea of going back to run or bike in cotton, especially considering commutes and bad weather.

Are there alternatives to synthetic clothing?

I don't know if there are any 100% options, but wool seems to be a possibility. It's usually blended with tencel, nylon, and/or lycra.

Tencel is actually not that synthetic (made from cellulose).

Personally I cannot stand most wool directly on my skin, exceptions being merino and cashmere, and no wool on wet (sweating) skin, but tencel is amazing.

Merino wool?

Is definitely the best option for technical clothes for cold weather. Try and avoid the blends and look for as close to 100% as possible.

I'd say that if you want your merino wool to last, it's imperative to look for blends. Pure merino wool is extremely fragile. Whether that's bad for the environment or not, I don't know.

Blends need to be washed way more often. If you don't overwash your pure wool it will last well.

Source my clothes.

Except that this particular discussion is about using wool in performance athletic gear.

I know I use wool for cross country skiing and cycling in cooler months. These clothes last several uses. When I try the same with plastic blends they need washing after one use.

EDIT. Several uses closely spaced and the items are aired out between use. If you sweat all over some wool then leave it in ball for a week it will probably rot.

I don't find this to the the case at all. Most of my base layers are blended merino and they need to be washed just as rarely as pure merino. Perhaps not all blends are created equal.

Interesting what percentages are we talking? Something like 30% is enough to ruin the garment for me. Maybe I am just very smelly!

So I looked at my clothing, and most of it seems to be 87% merino wool, which is less plastic than I expected, however in my experience that 13% makes a huge difference in terms of durability.

For running, I've gone exclusively to the "SmartWool" type shirts. To me they're just as cool when it's warm as the give-away nylon shirts you get at races, and I can get the stench out that simply refuses to leave synthetic shirts. Works well in the wet, and when I was bike commuting through Seattle winters I'd probably be wool all the way to the outer layer. Back in the day, wool cycle shorts were common, but I've not looked for them recently and just stuck to the usual spandexey shorts.

grab a trash bag and spend a few hours picking up plastic trash on your street. You'll probably remove more plastic from the environment than 100 lifetimes of avoiding the delicate cycle.

It's not about plastic trash in general, the concern here is microplastics in the sewage/ocean/food chain.

And yes, I know that plastics lying around might eventually land in the ocean as microplastics. That doesn't mean that we should ignore the problems caused by synthetic clothing.

Let's ignore it actually.

It's complicated. Synthetics have a lower environmental footprint than say, cotton, at least on the production side. Cotton farming uses among the highest amounts of pesticides of any cash crop, and still require fertilizer (oft petroleum derived). I'm not sure where the balance lies in overall environmental impact, but microplastics from laundering could be mitigated by filtering. Patagonia for example sell a filter bag to launder their fleeces in that supposedly catches some of the microplastic effluent.

Once the microplastics are generated they are quite hard to contain.

Linen is pretty green. It is made of flax and has low energy consumption during production, and moderate water use. Much lower water use than cotton on the production end, but it needs to be ironed which increases the energy use on the consumer end. It is biodegradable as well.

I would say our unscientific backward sense of aesthetics requires us to iron. Let's recall Veblen's ideas, and move society forward by questioning all the wasteful status-signalling rituals.

Update: your comment is more reason for me to buy Linen. I originally preferred it to cotton since the fabric tends to be more well suited to my warm tropical environment.

If you line dry, little to no ironing is usually required, even if you want to look like you still own one and remember where it is. :)

Linen is terrible for actual use though. Requiring ironing is ridiculous; not only does that use a lot of energy, it takes a lot of time too. Sure, you could just not iron like the other poster said, but then your clothes look horribly wrinkled and unkempt, unlike with other fabrics that just don't have this problem. Finally, linen isn't warm at all. It's just a lousy fabric. There's a reason so much stuff is made of synthetic fibers like nylon and polyester now: it performs extremely well, it wears extremely well (i.e., it doesn't wear out quickly, so you don't have to replace it very often), it feels nice, it cleans easily, etc.

Oh yeah, I forgot to add: you can't wash linen! You have to dry clean it (or at least a lot of it). Dry cleaning is horrible for the environment, and uses a lot of nasty chemicals, and it's expensive too.

Really? I wash my linen shirts, haven’t seen a problem.

> Patagonia for example sell a filter bag to launder their fleeces in that supposedly catches some of the microplastic effluent.

What's the next step? What happens to the filter bag, the fibers therein?

Landfill or incineration.

Ethical consumer did a report on this very recently.

https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/fashion-clothing/choosing-su...

It's definitely complicated, but their take was:

* Best: second-hand, recycled, or organic

* Middle: lyocell products (Tencel and Monocel), linen and hemp, followed by Modal, acrylic and polyester

* Worst: conventional cotton, non-lyocell viscose, rayon, elastane, nylon and wool

Do they say what’s wrong with wool? The page they link to is paywalled.

Best I can tell, methane from fecal matter, environmental impacts from grazing and irrigation of grazing land, and sheep dip is some nasty stuff.

OTOH, I would argue my wool items (t-shirts, underwear, as well as larger items) don't need to be washed nearly as often, and especially in comparison to cotton (an environmental disaster in most ways) t-shirts, they last a lot longer.

I dunno, I try to avoid cotton, rayon (et. al.), "bamboo" (mmm, not really), and the see-through shit you get at the mall. But I've got to wear something, so that's about the limit of effort I'm willing to put into it.

Synthetic clothes also clean more easily. Less susceptible to stains, lower temperature wash cycle, quicker drying, an less need for ironing, if at all.

There is trade off here.

not going to destroy my clothes for an infinitesimal amount of plastic in waste water, especially since I have no doubt that any positive environmental impact would be offset by replacing clothes more often.

they do argue that their 1 small study suggested the delicate cycle wears clothes out faster, but I highly doubt that. more evidence is needed.

If the experiment was not flawed, it is pretty clear evidence, isn't it?

What factors did they miss in your opinion? Other machine brand? Water hardness?

You can read the measurements in "Importance of Water-Volume on the Release of Microplastic Fibers from Laundry" by the team at the university of Newcastle : https://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/acs.est.9b03022/suppl...

Edit: the publication of the full article seem to be under embargo (https://eprints.ncl.ac.uk/259968)

Focusing on the fabric as the problem ignores the other major issue of the wasteful way we clean our clothes. This could potentially be much improved if we developed alternative ways of cleaning our clothes that didn’t waste resources and pollute as much as the current system: using lots of water, energy to heat the water, detergents to clean, energy to generate friction and circulation, dumping the waste into nature. Are there any current efforts/research into new and better (efficient & sustainable) fabric cleaning systems?

You can always wash your clothes by hand using "natural" soaps (like coconut oil soap).

Then dry them using a clothesline, weather permitting.

Use the clothesline indoors anyway.

Dryers ruin clothes, then you have to buy more.

You really want to uv treat your cold washed clothes, though (hang them outside). It kills bacteria about as well as bleach - see this subthread and story:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17069083

In particular (the now moved) :

http://www.dranniesexperiments.com/sunlight-testing

Sure, if you can. But if you can’t...

Dunno how necessary it is to UV disinfect clothes after washing. We don’t live in a sterile world.

Well, we live in a world that's bombarded with UV, so there could be some drawback to living in an environment artificially shielded from it. Both may be nonsterile, but that doesn't imply they are the same.

Note I said your "cold washed clothes". If you wash at 60C, there's no (great) need for additional sterilization.

Wash cold, and your just evenly distributing bacteria from your dirtiest items to your cleanest items...

I think we've been working quite hard on that problem. Most of the detergents I use today (in the UK) are now cold water detergents, that don't need warm water for every day use. Modern front-loading washing machines use about 50 litres (10 gallons) for a full load - about a fifth of old top-loaders.

I seem to recall some research into using ultrasound to clean fabrics, but I'm not sure where we are on that.

And their spin cycles really pull out a lot of water.

Modern machines vary the water consumption based on the load, so in reality it's even less. On a 40c wash they will consume around 0.5kWh of electricity.

This doesn’t fix some of the issues you mention, but helps stop microplastics from contaminating the environment.

http://guppyfriend.com/en/

I've heard a lot that the new "high efficiency" washers are a bit of a joke; while they may use less resources, they also are far less effective at cleaning, which just causes users to run the cycle multiple times.

It somewhat reminds me of the old saying about optimisation in software: "The most efficient way to do something is to not do it at all."

Not exactly something to follow when it comes to cleaning, however...

This title is misleading/clickbait. It really has little to do with the cycle.

"New research led by Newcastle University has shown that it is the volume of water used during the wash cycle, rather than the spinning action of the washing machine, which is the key factor in the release of plastic microfibres from clothes."

So it depends on the washing machine. Not all will use more water for the delicate cycle.

Frigging hate such misleading bullshit.

I mean of course it doesn’t depend on the setting on the cycle knob, but delicate cycles usually means more water at lower agitation speed, for longer time. So the title seems fine to me.

Could this study be used as a proxy for wash cycle impact on durability?

Do clothes actually last longer washed under the delicate cycle?

And wouldn’t the microfibre release be highest for new clothes and decrease over time as the relatively weakly attached fibres progressively break away?

Until you get catastrophic fabric failure...

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