Your clothes are shedding bits of plastic. Here’s what people are doing about it this Earth Day

By Jennifer McDermott

Bottles and bags, food wrappers and straws. Piping, packaging, toys and trays. Plastic is everywhere — and yet some people may be surprised at how much they actually wear.

A typical closet is loaded with plastic, woven into polyester activewear, acrylic sweaters, nylon swimsuits and stretchy socks — and it’s shedding into the environment nonstop.

When garments are worn, washed and put through the dryer, they shed plastic fiber fragments. A single load of laundry can release millions that are so tiny wastewater treatment plants can’t capture them all. They wind up in local waterways that connect to the ocean. Marine animals eat them, and that can pass plastic to larger animals and humans.

Even natural fabrics shed fibers and have chemicals that can leach into the environment. But polyester is the most widely used fiber on Earth, and along with other synthetic fibers accounts for about two-thirds of production worldwide.

Tuesday