Ocean pollution promise from Woolmark
Wool promotional body The Woolmark Company has highlighted the fibre’s biodegradability in marine environments in comments about ocean pollution.
It said that enough microplastics to make 50 billion plastic bottles enter wastewater every year from the washing of synthetic garments.
“There is no single solution to tackling fashion’s impact on the planet,” The Woolmark Company said, “but we do know that wool fabrics, even those treated with resin to be machine washable, are biodegradable in marine environments.”
It based this comment on a research paper from authors representing AgResearch Limited in New Zealand and the Fashion, Textiles and Technology Institute at the University of the Arts in London.
In this paper, which was published by Springer Nature, the authors concluded that machine-washable wool biodegraded to a greater extent than untreated wool in natural seawater.
Their tests on polyester, nylon and polypropylene showed “virtually no biodegradation”.
Based on this, The Woolmark Company affirmed that fabrics made from 100% wool do not contribute to microplastic pollution.
