mOSt eFFIciEnt SYsteM
Jesus god why must we be burdened with knowledge of how horrific everything is :doomer:
Ahhhhhhhhhh. I hate it. Fucking everything I do no matter what hurts the environment, fucks over workers somewhere, and just the continuation of capitalism. It makes me go insane.
Just kinda wondering out loud here, but I have mostly vintage clothes and a lot are polyester blends, some with rayon, do these still shed microplastics after 30-60 years? tbh i rarely wash them cause they're delicate. Not sure if it's something that goes away, or if older materials were different, etc
All washing results in shed fibers. It does. Washing is a destructive action. To remove stains, smells, dirt, food, makeup, oils, etc is to damage the fibers and inevitably some are damaged enough that the physical forces at work in agitating them in a washing machine cause tiny pieces of fibers to come lose and are washed down the drain. In fact the physical actions and water themselves are damaging in small ways (as is heat, if you want to keep your clothes fresher longer, do not run your dryer super hot, ideally get them just between slightly damp and dry and then hang to dry). It reminds me of that story about how a detergent company's ad people came to the scientists and said they wanted a detergent that would make clothing newer, scientists said that's not possible but came up with an acceptable alternative which is a detergent that makes clothing look newer by more effectively destroying fuzz, frizz, loose ends, etc, e.g. by more quickly destroying the clothing.
That said. There is a certain amount of extra loose, extra easily shed fibers with new clothing from the factory so older clothing would shed less and if you wear the same clothing for 4 years instead of buying 4 sets of it in that time you've probably drastically reduced the amount being shed on your behalf.
It's why ideally you don't want to over-wash clothing. The physical forces are stressful on fabrics as well in their own right. Not useful to you but for those who wear bras, try to avoid washing then wearing. You want to rotate them to give the fabrics/shape time to kind of heal from both the strains of being worn in the case of a bra and from the wash. Ideally one should have more than 3 bras. I think it goes, one in the wash, one to wear, one recovering from wearing.
Honestly I wouldn't worry about this individualistic ethical consumption crap. As long as you have capitalist fast fashion, capitalist oil companies, capitalist fiber producing companies all invested as pushers to sell more it's not going to be resolved. The plastic problem is a societal level one that won't be fixed by changing buying habits. It needs to be addressed with regulations and ideally economic planning. Because any good action you might take on wearing all cotton clothing is undone by wasteful practices in plastic packaging at the grocery or the clothing store. Sorry to get back on underwear but this one lingerie shop I went to for a while had this system where they literally shipped every single pair of panties in individual plastic packaging. The sales people then took it out of the packaging and put it on display and in drawers. And they weren't shipped loose either, they were in like boxes so it was completely unnecessary. That kind of shit needs to stop. In the meantime you'll pry my nylon underwear from my cold dead hands.
Apparently there are filters to eliminate like 90% of the microplastics that shed during the washing cycle, but theyre like $140, so not really feasible for most ppl.
If you have the means and the conscious, please think about maybe installing one tho
I guess if you want to look at the bright side, if you don’t do your laundry as often as you should, like myself... You’re actually doing the environment a favor.
On a related note, I wish DIY fashion/clothing was something more accessible. I realize it’s always going to take a certain amount of skill to do, but I still wonder if there are ways we could make it easier for people with no experience with that sort of thing.
My wife is a skilled knitter and it's wild how much work goes into a sweater.
She'll have friends who are like "omg you should open an Etsy shop" and she hates it because if she paid herself minimum wage for just the hours, ignoring the material, it would still cost over $200 for a sweater. Using natural fibers pushes that over $500 at least.
Yea, and then people on Etsy would be like, 500$ for a sweater OMG! I can get one at warlmort for 30$ (or whatever they cost)
The thing is many of the common clothes we wear have advanced sews that could never be done with a home machine. Things like flatlocks or dual chainstitch sews require expensive industrial equipment. The home alternative sews just look bad, and perform worse. There's a reason clothes made from a basic lockstitch home sewing machine are usually dresses, button up shirts, suits, etc. Things like athletic wear are full of those advanced sews I was talking about, with difficult to work with material too.
The near-slaves who make our clothes in Asia are actually all very skilled at what they do in their sewing jobs. There's this idea that factory workers all do easy monotonous jobs, not so. The sewers who make our clothes are all incredibly skilled at doing their one particular sewing operation, and when combined they all make the near perfect item. Doing something similar at home is incredibly hard, which is why home made clothes are usually so much more simple than athletic wear or even normal casual wear that you'd buy in a store.
Natural fibers are really better for most casual clothes. I mean sure things like goretex have their uses but most of the time a waxed canvas jacket will do just fine. I always try to stick to natural fiber clothes if I can, preferably things other than standard cotton if I can get it. Linen for heat, wool for cold, silk for comfort, etc. Also I love love love my supima cotton shirts, I've basically replaced all of my t shirts with them and it's totally worth it (tho you can get them for like 10 each).
The hardest thing for me to find a natural replacement of is fleece though, polar fleece is just really damn nice and I've yet to find a good natural fiber alternative. If anyone knows one let me know please.
