Eco Fabrics and Microplastics: Is the Future of Fashion Eating Your Clothing?

This may not be as far-fetched as it sounds. Eco-friendly fabrics are being created from edible everyday items such as kombucha, algae, and microgreens. Grass, cork, and mushrooms are other natural resources being engineered into fabrics. You may have heard the Plato quote, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” a phrase that aptly applies to the need for environmentally-conscious fabrics.

If you care about the environment, or future generations, you should be concerned with the link between microplastics and the fashion industry. Microplastics are accumulating in our bodies, scientifically proven nearly 25 years ago. Most fast fashion is created from microplastics, with 88% of newly created pieces containing freshly manufactured plastics.

This is a significant problem because fast fashion not only generates horrifying amounts of plastic waste, but is also created using vast amounts of water. One single shirt requires just under 700 gallons, and a pair of jeans uses 2000 gallons.

Fast fashion never purchased is a waste of resources just to be manufactured and discarded as new clothing is released monthly or quarterly. Americans send over 80 pounds of clothing a year to the dump. Not a negligible amount, 85% of textiles wind up in landfills. Nearly 64% of clothing is made from microplastics. Items made from plastic fabrics including spandex, polyester, and nylon take 20-200 years to decompose, and even then plastic doesn’t disappear, it goes into the environment.

Not even in your home are you safe from microplastics. Microparticles break off from rugs, curtains, clothes, or anything fabric. The average household dust is 33% microplastics. This can be reduced by voting with your dollar and purchasing cotton, bamboo or other natural, not synthetic, fabrics.

It’s important to care because of the negative health effects of microplastics in the body. People are bombarded with microplastic from numerous industries, including fashion, homegoods, and food. Each type of plastic having different health consequences adds to the complexity of the issue. According to a study from February 2021, microplastics can cause physical stress and damage, inflammation, obesity, hormone disruption, tumor increases, abnormal sexual development, and liver changes, while nanoplastics are smaller and more difficult to study.

If you care about the ocean, fashion is not your friend. Fashion contributes to 20-35% of microplastic in the ocean. Clothing manufacturing is also responsible for 20% of industrial water pollution. In a never-ending informational deep dive, there is another issue with the fashion industry. 10-20% of pesticide use happens for the textile sector. Pesticides hurt the workers applying them and damage the environment, pollinators and aquatic life alike.

There are programs that drive the development of eco-friendly fabrics. At the Fabricademy in Barcelona, different biological fabrics are being developed every year. Keep your eye out for their new worldwide program coming in September 2022. There are Fabricademy locations in other metropolises around the globe with world-renowned mentors and eco-conscious leaders. Some of the other locations include Tuscany, Italy and Amsterdam, Netherlands.

It is imperative that everyone works together to reduce their plastic impact for the good of the entire natural world. If you see the importance, take the steps mentioned above such as choosing natural, organic fabrics, supporting eco-friendly companies instead of fast fashion, and keep fighting for awareness. This problem will not go away and it will not solve itself. Change requires action.

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