The invisible cost of synthetic fabric

Polyester, acrylic, nylon, fleece — these are plastics. They are petroleum-based materials engineered to feel like fabric. And like all plastics, they shed fragments when subjected to friction, heat, and agitation.

Your washing machine provides all three. Every cycle subjects synthetic garments to thousands of collisions with other clothes, the drum, and water moving at force. Each collision breaks off microscopic fibres — fragments smaller than 5mm, mostly invisible to the naked eye.

Those fibres flow with the wastewater into treatment systems. Most wastewater treatment plants capture between 70% and 80% of microplastics — which sounds significant until you realise the volume involved. The remaining 20–30% that escapes reaches waterways directly. And the captured fibres in treatment plant sludge are typically spread on agricultural land, where they re-enter soil and groundwater.

There is no clean exit. Once released, microplastic fibres persist in the environment indefinitely. They do not biodegrade.

Not all clothes shed the same.

The worst offenders are acrylic and fleece. Research shows acrylic sheds roughly 1.5 times more microplastic fibres than polyester per wash. Fleece — widely marketed as a sustainable choice because it is often made from recycled plastic bottles — sheds far more than woven synthetics.

Polyester blends are also significant contributors. Even garments marketed as partially natural — a cotton/polyester blend, for example — release microplastics proportional to their synthetic content.

The critical distinction is this: natural fibres shed too — but what they shed is cellulose. Cellulose is plant-based, biodegradable, and does not persist in the environment. It is fundamentally different from shedding fragments of petroleum-based plastic.

It ends up inside us.

Microplastic fibres from laundry enter waterways. From waterways they enter marine organisms — fish, shellfish, plankton. From there they enter the food chain. Research published by Stanford Medicine in 2025 confirmed that microplastic exposure is associated with inflammation, deteriorating tissue, cell damage, and metabolic disruption.

The average person now ingests approximately 5 grams of microplastics per week. The equivalent weight of a credit card. Largely from fibres in food, drinking water, and the air we breathe indoors — where airborne microplastic concentrations from laundry and clothing wear are consistently high.

Scientists are clear that the full extent of the health impact is not yet known. What they agree on is that the accumulation rate of microplastics in the ocean has tripled in the last two decades — and the trajectory is not slowing.

Five actions that actually make a difference.

The choice you make at the point of purchase

The fashion industry produces approximately 92 million tonnes of textile waste annually. Synthetic fibres — the majority of what is produced — will persist in the environment for hundreds of years. The microplastic problem is not a side effect of fashion. It is a direct consequence of building an entire industry on petroleum-based materials.

The solution is not a filter. It is not a lower temperature wash setting. Those are harm-reduction strategies for a problem that should not exist in the first place. The solution is choosing differently at the point of purchase — before the garment enters your home, your wardrobe, and your washing machine.

At Oceans Gallery, we chose organic cotton from the beginning. Not because it was the easiest or cheapest material. Because when we understood what synthetic fabrics were releasing into the water — and ultimately into the ocean we named our brand after — there was no other choice.

Every order we fulfil also funds verified plastic recovery through our Cleanhub partnership. That means we are actively removing plastic from the environment while simultaneously building garments that do not add to it.