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Comment by asteli | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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. :)

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

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