Your clean clothes have a dirty secret: every time you do laundry, the fabrics shed tiny fibres into the water, contributing to the hundreds of tonnes of microfibres released into our rivers and oceans every year.
Metro Vancouver is collaborating with Ocean Wise, the University of B.C. and others through the Microfibers Partnership to better understand how this type of pollution affects ecosystems and what may be done to address it. A new Metro Vancouver campaign called Our Ocean Thanks You asks residents to wash their clothes in cold water to reduce microfibre shedding.
Although wastewater treatment can capture some microfibres, everyone can do their part to reduce this pollution at the source. Pilot testing has shown that washing in cold on shorter cycles reduces microfibre shedding by up to 50 per cent.
Visit switchtocold.ca to find out more ways to reduce microfibre shedding.
