Your fleece jacket is bad for the environment

lingonberry
Welcome to Counterpoint, a series in which we challenge conventional wisdom about well-known products. This time: fleece jackets.
First off, let me introduce you to the villain of this story, Fleece. Specifically, the microplastics it throws away. You see, most fleece jackets are made of polyester. And polyester (aka polyethylene terephthalate) is plastic, which derives from a chemical reaction between air, oil and water. But wait, I know. I can hear you now. People use plastic for everything. Why are my fleece jackets the problem?
Microplastic fleece jackets are more difficult to hoop due to their size. If you see a water bottle floating along the shore, you pick it up. Or, if there’s a flock floating a few miles offshore, a conservation team can pick them up with just one quick sieve. Microplastics are usually no more than a few millimeters (five at most). For context, a pea is about 10mm in diameter. The tip of a pencil is approximately 1mm in diameter. They are difficult to see and even more difficult to process. But, microplastics are everywhere.
“In a business-as-usual scenario, the ocean is expected to contain one ton of plastic for every three tons of fish by 2025, and by 2050, more plastic than fish [by weight]”, determined researchers in a 2016 Ellen MacArthur Foundation study. That’s bad news. And it’s not a problem we should put aside and fix later. Scientists have found microplastics in table salt, fish caught miles from the California coast, and the shores where effluents and other sewage are piped.
Campaigners fear that we are underestimating the reach of microplastics derived from clothing, even in the face of such dire achievements. Any damage to the environment ends up affecting us as well, especially if we are not aware of the potential problems. But sooner than most realize, some are claiming that we will learn that plastics have infiltrated our food, the air we breathe and the water we drink.
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