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How do you feel about fleece?
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This not very happy headline popped up when I asked for a new tab:
Babies are full of microplastics, new research shows
Worrying research finds that babies have 15 times more microplastics in their bodies than adults.
https://www.euronews.com/green/amp/2021/10/01/babies-are-full-of-microplastics-new-research-shows2 -
I like what they do with sheets2
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I have a couple of cashmere sweaters too, from ebay and about 20.00. Glorious.1
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NorthCascades wrote: »This not very happy headline popped up when I asked for a new tab:
Babies are full of microplastics, new research shows
Worrying research finds that babies have 15 times more microplastics in their bodies than adults.
https://www.euronews.com/green/amp/2021/10/01/babies-are-full-of-microplastics-new-research-shows
That's why I only get my babies at Goodwill.
Sorry.7 -
SuzySunshine99 wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »This not very happy headline popped up when I asked for a new tab:
Babies are full of microplastics, new research shows
Worrying research finds that babies have 15 times more microplastics in their bodies than adults.
https://www.euronews.com/green/amp/2021/10/01/babies-are-full-of-microplastics-new-research-shows
That's why I only get my babies at Goodwill.
Sorry.
Now you can recycle them when you get tired of changing diapers!!?!0 -
NorthCascades wrote: »SuzySunshine99 wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »This not very happy headline popped up when I asked for a new tab:
Babies are full of microplastics, new research shows
Worrying research finds that babies have 15 times more microplastics in their bodies than adults.
https://www.euronews.com/green/amp/2021/10/01/babies-are-full-of-microplastics-new-research-shows
That's why I only get my babies at Goodwill.
Sorry.
Now you can recycle them when you get tired of changing diapers!!?!
It is best to recycle them as early as possible. By the time they’re teenagers it’s very hard to find a recycler that will take them.
Seriously though.
Babies are wrapped in fleece blankets and fleece onesies all the time. And they chew it and suck on it.
So it definitely needs more attention.5 -
I had a fleece blanket, it was very soft and I loved that about it. I noticed one morning that my watch had a crack, but it rubbed away. Next morning, and every morning after sleeping under that blanket my watch had a bunch of hairline cracks. And they all wiped right off. 🙃
Ok, what's really going on here? The blanket was shedding these barely visible, thinner than a hair plastic filaments. They were light enough to float in the air. My kitty has asthma, we must both be breathing this stuff. The blanket found a new home.1 -
This thread has me rethinking my dog, Lucy's, dog toys. Some background on Lucy. She was saved from a kill shelter literally an hour or so before her mom was put down in a KY shelter (sad reality -- they put down pregnant moms because they don't have the money to feed multiple dogs). The mother got adopted first. She was 27 lbs and couldn't nurse seven pups -- the mom was Beagle and Jack Russell and the father was Great Pyr! Linus alone is around 80 lbs and a food machine. We adopted the first two puppies -- Linus and Lucy, of course. The lady who saved them, who is just a Guardian Angel that saves tons of dogs around KY and Appalacia, insisted that whoever adopted them must take them together as they are inseparable.
Anyway, Lucy loves her Hedgehog dog toys. Turns out they are made from fleece. She holds these things in her mouth all the time, like a security blanket. She's gone from a skiddish girl, scared of her own shadow, to one that has blossomed. But she holds on to those hedgehogs. Has one in her mouth literally like 20 to 30 minutes a day (or more).
Turns out a LOT of the dog toys are all made from fleece. But there are some companies making wool dog toys. I'm looking hard into wool dog options that she might like.4 -
I was paddling on Monday. I had laundered a pair of nylon pants I wear over a 0.5mm pair of wetsuit bottom thermal pants. There was a lot of bright lint spread on them. Tiny lint. While I was pleasantly surprised all the seeds that had been stuck to them came out in the wash, but what had I stacked these pants on that shed all over them?
Well then I remembered I washed my high-viz clothing (work requirement) in the same load. One item was a warm sweatshirt. I hadn't considered that it was fleece. I still don't really think of it as fleece, but it's polyester for sure. Little tiny bright green/yellow fibers.
If that many were stuck to my pants, how many went down the sewer? How many went through the wastewater treatment plant and entered the environment? How many made it down the river and out to sea? How many were eaten by small animals low on the food chain? How man of them were eaten by larger animals? Did it affect them by filling their bellies with undigestible material so they couldn't get adequate nutrition? How many will I end up eating when I eat seafood?
Comes around goes around. I'm guilty too, and I am limiting what I buy. Other options are available. I will continue to wear the fleece I already have including some really old stuff that's mostly worn out. Then it will get recycled, but ideally into something other than more fleece.2 -
I was paddling on Monday. I had laundered a pair of nylon pants I wear over a 0.5mm pair of wetsuit bottom thermal pants. There was a lot of bright lint spread on them. Tiny lint. While I was pleasantly surprised all the seeds that had been stuck to them came out in the wash, but what had I stacked these pants on that shed all over them?
Well then I remembered I washed my high-viz clothing (work requirement) in the same load. One item was a warm sweatshirt. I hadn't considered that it was fleece. I still don't really think of it as fleece, but it's polyester for sure. Little tiny bright green/yellow fibers.
If that many were stuck to my pants, how many went down the sewer? How many went through the wastewater treatment plant and entered the environment? How many made it down the river and out to sea? How many were eaten by small animals low on the food chain? How man of them were eaten by larger animals? Did it affect them by filling their bellies with undigestible material so they couldn't get adequate nutrition? How many will I end up eating when I eat seafood?
Comes around goes around. I'm guilty too, and I am limiting what I buy. Other options are available. I will continue to wear the fleece I already have including some really old stuff that's mostly worn out. Then it will get recycled, but ideally into something other than more fleece.
There are these. It's about the best option I've seen. Closed loop system to filter out microplastics from going down the drain when you do laundry. And they collect the filters so they don't go into the environment.
Is polyester just as bad as fleece? I assume so, but this is all new to me. I've been a tree hugger for decades, but some of the new stuff on microfibers is new to all of us.
https://planetcare.org/collections/all-products1 -
MikePfirrman wrote: »Turns out a LOT of the dog toys are all made from fleece. But there are some companies making wool dog toys. I'm looking hard into wool dog options that she might like.
Cats love wool. Don't know why, but it makes them very happy.
I don't want to tell other people what to do or how to think, but I'm going to eat this for context. Fleece is doing this thing, we've learned, and it can only be bad, but there's some impact from all of our activities. A small dog toy vs a large fleece blanket (or hundreds of millions of people in fleece jackets), considering washing frequency, is a pretty small amount of harm.2 -
MikePfirrman wrote: »I was paddling on Monday. I had laundered a pair of nylon pants I wear over a 0.5mm pair of wetsuit bottom thermal pants. There was a lot of bright lint spread on them. Tiny lint. While I was pleasantly surprised all the seeds that had been stuck to them came out in the wash, but what had I stacked these pants on that shed all over them?
Well then I remembered I washed my high-viz clothing (work requirement) in the same load. One item was a warm sweatshirt. I hadn't considered that it was fleece. I still don't really think of it as fleece, but it's polyester for sure. Little tiny bright green/yellow fibers.
If that many were stuck to my pants, how many went down the sewer? How many went through the wastewater treatment plant and entered the environment? How many made it down the river and out to sea? How many were eaten by small animals low on the food chain? How man of them were eaten by larger animals? Did it affect them by filling their bellies with undigestible material so they couldn't get adequate nutrition? How many will I end up eating when I eat seafood?
Comes around goes around. I'm guilty too, and I am limiting what I buy. Other options are available. I will continue to wear the fleece I already have including some really old stuff that's mostly worn out. Then it will get recycled, but ideally into something other than more fleece.
There are these. It's about the best option I've seen. Closed loop system to filter out microplastics from going down the drain when you do laundry. And they collect the filters so they don't go into the environment.
Is polyester just as bad as fleece? I assume so, but this is all new to me. I've been a tree hugger for decades, but some of the new stuff on microfibers is new to all of us.
https://planetcare.org/collections/all-products
Thanks for the link, I'm going to look into this. 🙂
Fleece is made from polyester, but the way it's made makes it especially bad (in this regard).
It's really ironic and sad. Polar fleece was invented in the 1980s, it was made from recycling plastic bottles. The company that invented it refused to patent it, because they thought a cheap method of turning garbage into warm clothing was too important for anyone to own. It's only been very recently that people learned about this down side.4 -
Apparently there's enough microplastic in the air to affect the climate.
https://phys.org/news/2021-10-microplastics-air-earth-atmosphere-affect.amp0 -
MikePfirrman wrote: »I was paddling on Monday. I had laundered a pair of nylon pants I wear over a 0.5mm pair of wetsuit bottom thermal pants. There was a lot of bright lint spread on them. Tiny lint. While I was pleasantly surprised all the seeds that had been stuck to them came out in the wash, but what had I stacked these pants on that shed all over them?
Well then I remembered I washed my high-viz clothing (work requirement) in the same load. One item was a warm sweatshirt. I hadn't considered that it was fleece. I still don't really think of it as fleece, but it's polyester for sure. Little tiny bright green/yellow fibers.
If that many were stuck to my pants, how many went down the sewer? How many went through the wastewater treatment plant and entered the environment? How many made it down the river and out to sea? How many were eaten by small animals low on the food chain? How man of them were eaten by larger animals? Did it affect them by filling their bellies with undigestible material so they couldn't get adequate nutrition? How many will I end up eating when I eat seafood?
Comes around goes around. I'm guilty too, and I am limiting what I buy. Other options are available. I will continue to wear the fleece I already have including some really old stuff that's mostly worn out. Then it will get recycled, but ideally into something other than more fleece.
There are these. It's about the best option I've seen. Closed loop system to filter out microplastics from going down the drain when you do laundry. And they collect the filters so they don't go into the environment.
Is polyester just as bad as fleece? I assume so, but this is all new to me. I've been a tree hugger for decades, but some of the new stuff on microfibers is new to all of us.
https://planetcare.org/collections/all-products
I looked this up--interesting BUT wouldn't it be better to make industrial filters and filter municipal treatment plants? It seems to me that it would be effective instead of relying on each household to take the initiative. However, I'm just an average person and don't know the technical problems involved.2 -
snowflake954 wrote: »MikePfirrman wrote: »I was paddling on Monday. I had laundered a pair of nylon pants I wear over a 0.5mm pair of wetsuit bottom thermal pants. There was a lot of bright lint spread on them. Tiny lint. While I was pleasantly surprised all the seeds that had been stuck to them came out in the wash, but what had I stacked these pants on that shed all over them?
Well then I remembered I washed my high-viz clothing (work requirement) in the same load. One item was a warm sweatshirt. I hadn't considered that it was fleece. I still don't really think of it as fleece, but it's polyester for sure. Little tiny bright green/yellow fibers.
If that many were stuck to my pants, how many went down the sewer? How many went through the wastewater treatment plant and entered the environment? How many made it down the river and out to sea? How many were eaten by small animals low on the food chain? How man of them were eaten by larger animals? Did it affect them by filling their bellies with undigestible material so they couldn't get adequate nutrition? How many will I end up eating when I eat seafood?
Comes around goes around. I'm guilty too, and I am limiting what I buy. Other options are available. I will continue to wear the fleece I already have including some really old stuff that's mostly worn out. Then it will get recycled, but ideally into something other than more fleece.
There are these. It's about the best option I've seen. Closed loop system to filter out microplastics from going down the drain when you do laundry. And they collect the filters so they don't go into the environment.
Is polyester just as bad as fleece? I assume so, but this is all new to me. I've been a tree hugger for decades, but some of the new stuff on microfibers is new to all of us.
https://planetcare.org/collections/all-products
I looked this up--interesting BUT wouldn't it be better to make industrial filters and filter municipal treatment plants? It seems to me that it would be effective instead of relying on each household to take the initiative. However, I'm just an average person and don't know the technical problems involved.
I hate to say it, but if we wait for government, it will be too late. The largest environmental bill in US history was just resoundingly squashed as too expensive.
Here's the thing -- they said that dikes around New Orleans were too expensive until Hurricane Katrina destroyed the entire city. It ended up costing like $160B to rebuild it when $2B in prevention would have saved lives and saved the city.
The cost of climate change will make Covid look like pennies. It could even potentially destabilize governments. But no one wants to address the cost now. I'm wish I could say I was exaggerating when I say destabilization of civilization itself really has no price.
Just as one example. Arizona, where I live, just put out $30M more dollars to bring buy a higher percentage of water coming from the Colorado River, which basically feeds the entire Southwestern US. It does nothing to address water shortages or that we are having historic drought.
Some have proposed to build a water pipeline from the East (where rains have been increasing) to the West and it has been abandoned as too expensive. It would certainly be challenging and expensive, but if we can go to the moon, we can do that. It's not even as complex as the interstate highway system or the canals that were built in the early 1900s. Same with desalinization plants along the coast with water pipelines piping the water to cities. That's also been tabled as too expensive. Something has to give.
I read an article a couple weeks back that the wealthy in California are installing a device that can make your own residential water from air. They are like 30K but rich people are seeing that is the only "sustainable" path forward. Is that fair to the rest of the population that can't afford 30K??
There are devices now that you can install in a home (they cost 4K currently) that reduce water consumption, though grey water recycling, by as much as 70%. All new homes in the Western states (at least the SW) of the US should require that. And a timeline for retrofitting to be done. We need solutions now. Politicians are either denying there's a problem or kicking the can.
Private industry is doing much more than government, at least in the US. What the government is doing, which is insufficient, is putting money into research. We need more of that at a minimum.3 -
I hate to say it, but I think individual action, including action in the form of a (plastic) home filtration product (with filters that need to be replaced every 20 washer-loads - well, a cartridge lasts "up to 20 loads"), isn't going to achieve much more than counting on government will.
It's nice that there's a closed-loop system, i.e., you return ship them, they "make sure that microfibers are properly repurposed and cartridges refurbished for future use."
It says: "With your purchase you will keep 52 plastic bags out of the ocean every year!"
Starter kit, $171USD, comes with 13 filter cartridges, refill pack of 12 cartridges is $112USD.
I wonder how the repurposing ensures that those fibers are permanently out of circulation?
("At the moment, we are safely storing the used filtering mediums. When we have a sufficient quantity, they will be reused/recycled. The current plan is to reuse the filtering mediums by converting them into insulation mats. However, we are continuously looking for viable and adequate solutions and will always choose the best available option to reuse/recycle the fibers. Incineration or landfilling are not acceptable.")
I wonder how the plastic consumed, and the ecological weight of the manufacturing and supply chain, weighs off against the ecological benefits? (". . . we reuse 95% of our filters and recycle 5%." (I wonder how many are discarded rather than return-shipped?), the plastic in the other parts of the system will wear out someday, energy is used in production and "closed loop" management of the filters, etc. . . . vs. those 52 plastic bags kept out of the ocean, per year.)
Perhaps there's a net ecological positive, I don't know. But I don't see how it's a huge one.
Call me a cynic, but it does seem like an earnest, potentially profitable way to help people draw makeshift halos on their mental self-image.
Don't get me wrong, I *am* concerned about the problem, do make manageable choices in my personal life to (I hope) contribute to the problem a little less, but I'm underwhelmed by this particular strategy.
Any realistic level of individual consumer choice - realistic in the sense of individual scope of action, and proportion of people who'll make those choices - is likely to have negligible impact. Even in the relatively developed countries, a huge proportion of people are more concerned with getting inexpensive durable clothing so that they can afford food, housing, child care, health care (where not available to all without point-of-service cost), and other things near the base of the hierarchy of needs.
I agree that government action is also improbable on any reasonable time scale.
BTW: All quoted passages above cut and pasted from the linked web site, without any intention on my part to make them look worse than they would to someone who carefully, critically read the site (IMO).4 -
MikePfirrman wrote: »snowflake954 wrote: »MikePfirrman wrote: »I was paddling on Monday. I had laundered a pair of nylon pants I wear over a 0.5mm pair of wetsuit bottom thermal pants. There was a lot of bright lint spread on them. Tiny lint. While I was pleasantly surprised all the seeds that had been stuck to them came out in the wash, but what had I stacked these pants on that shed all over them?
Well then I remembered I washed my high-viz clothing (work requirement) in the same load. One item was a warm sweatshirt. I hadn't considered that it was fleece. I still don't really think of it as fleece, but it's polyester for sure. Little tiny bright green/yellow fibers.
If that many were stuck to my pants, how many went down the sewer? How many went through the wastewater treatment plant and entered the environment? How many made it down the river and out to sea? How many were eaten by small animals low on the food chain? How man of them were eaten by larger animals? Did it affect them by filling their bellies with undigestible material so they couldn't get adequate nutrition? How many will I end up eating when I eat seafood?
Comes around goes around. I'm guilty too, and I am limiting what I buy. Other options are available. I will continue to wear the fleece I already have including some really old stuff that's mostly worn out. Then it will get recycled, but ideally into something other than more fleece.
There are these. It's about the best option I've seen. Closed loop system to filter out microplastics from going down the drain when you do laundry. And they collect the filters so they don't go into the environment.
Is polyester just as bad as fleece? I assume so, but this is all new to me. I've been a tree hugger for decades, but some of the new stuff on microfibers is new to all of us.
https://planetcare.org/collections/all-products
I looked this up--interesting BUT wouldn't it be better to make industrial filters and filter municipal treatment plants? It seems to me that it would be effective instead of relying on each household to take the initiative. However, I'm just an average person and don't know the technical problems involved.
I hate to say it, but if we wait for government, it will be too late. The largest environmental bill in US history was just resoundingly squashed as too expensive.
Here's the thing -- they said that dikes around New Orleans were too expensive until Hurricane Katrina destroyed the entire city. It ended up costing like $160B to rebuild it when $2B in prevention would have saved lives and saved the city.
The cost of climate change will make Covid look like pennies. It could even potentially destabilize governments. But no one wants to address the cost now. I'm wish I could say I was exaggerating when I say destabilization of civilization itself really has no price.
Just as one example. Arizona, where I live, just put out $30M more dollars to bring buy a higher percentage of water coming from the Colorado River, which basically feeds the entire Southwestern US. It does nothing to address water shortages or that we are having historic drought.
Some have proposed to build a water pipeline from the East (where rains have been increasing) to the West and it has been abandoned as too expensive. It would certainly be challenging and expensive, but if we can go to the moon, we can do that. It's not even as complex as the interstate highway system or the canals that were built in the early 1900s. Same with desalinization plants along the coast with water pipelines piping the water to cities. That's also been tabled as too expensive. Something has to give.
I read an article a couple weeks back that the wealthy in California are installing a device that can make your own residential water from air. They are like 30K but rich people are seeing that is the only "sustainable" path forward. Is that fair to the rest of the population that can't afford 30K??
There are devices now that you can install in a home (they cost 4K currently) that reduce water consumption, though grey water recycling, by as much as 70%. All new homes in the Western states (at least the SW) of the US should require that. And a timeline for retrofitting to be done. We need solutions now. Politicians are either denying there's a problem or kicking the can.
Private industry is doing much more than government, at least in the US. What the government is doing, which is insufficient, is putting money into research. We need more of that at a minimum.
Ah--it's an old story, isn't it? Let's play catch up later. Here I was, always criticizing the Italians for living in the present or the past. Prevention used to be an American pride. Sigh.1 -
@AnnPT77 -- agree with your basic points. I mentioned a few pages back that this thread was the impetus I needed to go out and get reusable mesh produce bags for when I grocery shop (in addition to my bags I take for checkout already). In just a few weeks, I guarantee I've reduced my plastic bag impact by way more than 52 bags and that's been less than a month.
If no one used those plastic, one use product bags, we'd make a huge dent in the plastic waste. If plastic water and soda bottles were outlawed, that would go a huge way in toward the problem.
Consumer pressure works. It used to be that every restaurant gave you straws. Now, if you want one, you will have to ask for it.3 -
I guess the municipal wastewater treatment plants only get about 40% of it. I don't know how effective pressure can be there.1
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MargaretYakoda wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »MargaretYakoda wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »It's interesting to see how some folks in here hate the way fleece wears, or feels against their skin. I used to be in that group. I found the stuff to be too warm and not breathe, I would sweat with almost any exertion and it would feel clammy, like wearing a plastic bag. It's great for going to the store on a rainy day, walking on flat ground, or something like that but not much more. Then I got a grid fleece, brushed and exquisitely soft, very breathable, quick drying, and after years I finally understood what the fuss is about.
The fuss over polyester fleece in my world is because it is cheap and warm.
And I can’t fault people who wear it for those reasons.
I have a lot of merino base layers hanging in my closet, from SmartWool, Icebreaker, Minus33, etc. Also polyester and blended ones. For what it's worth, it's been years since I wore any of the merino ones, because they don't keep me as comfortable. I get sweaty hiking up hill, they absorb and hold too much moisture, they never dry, and the feeling against the skin of even ultrafine merino is less pleasant than the poly stuff.
For context, in sitting here writing this in a cashmere sweater. Soft clothes delight me.
I think, once I hit my goal weight, I want a cashmere sweater.
PM me if you'd like a men's XL baby blue 100% cashmere sweater. I'm doing some spring cleaning. If it doesn't fit, you can cut the arms off at the shoulder, sew a loop of elastic in, and have leg warmers from your knees to your ankles. (I dated a girl who taught me that.) It's from Value Village and the color just doesn't work with my face. I'd rather it make someone happy than take up space in my closet.1
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