Green washing: How to reduce microplastic in your laundry

Here are ten ways to stop 'plastic soup' flowing from your washing machine into our oceans

Included in the plastic rubbish you can see, is the burden of microplastic you cannot. As small as a split human hair or as big as 5mm, 16 billion tons of the small stuff is already sitting on the floors of oceans. Picture: iStock

This  is the simple question posed by Friends of the Earth: Are you eating your own clothes?

According to a study led by led by Dr Liam Morrison, from the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Galway (2021), 90% of our protected waterways, 79 areas of Special Conservation (SPAC) in Ireland, show the presence of micro-plastics (MP), also referred to widely as micro-fibres or nano-plastics.