Changing your laundry habits
Project Earth • 1m 44s
Laundry can spill plastics into the ocean and rivers. How does it happen? With each load of laundry in a washing machine, millions of microfibers come off our clothes.
They are tiny strands of plastics, almost invisible to the naked eye. They mainly come from synthetic fabrics like polyester, fleece, rayon, and nylon.
U.S. scientists estimate that 2.9 million tonnes of microfibers have been emitted from a combination of hand and machine washing between 1950 and 2016.
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