We’re all EATING our own WASHING

Prince Harry is right — ‘fast fashion’ clothes made from polyester are polluting the seas with plastic. Even worse? It ends up back in the food chain, which means ...

As fetching as that latest trendy addition to your wardrobe might be, you are unlikely to have ever considered it literally good enough to eat. Unpalatable as it seems, you probably have swallowed some of it — or, even less appetisingly, something very similar which someone else was wearing.

not that anybody would have noticed — let alone, thankfully, tasted it — at the time. for we are talking about tiny plastic fibres that end up in the food chain after being shed by clothes made from synthetic materials such as nylon, polyester, elastane and acrylic.

Often these fibres come out in the washing machine, and from there make their way to our oceans where they are eaten by fish and other sea creatures including crabs, lobsters and mussels, which can then end up on dining tables.

Prince harry correctly alluded to the problem yesterday as he and Meghan visited south Melbourne beach and met primary school students who have been trying to keep the local coastline litter-free.

‘there is literally plastic everywhere,’ the Duke of sussex said. ‘And, you know, microplastics are a real problem, especially the microplastics from fast fashion. Did you know that’s one of the biggest culprits?’ if not, they should. fast fashion involves transforming ideas from the catwalk or celebrity culture into cheap, synthetic garments in high street stores at breakneck speed.

With Britons buying twice as many clothes as a decade ago — last year we spent £50billion — and replacing them more frequently, fast fashion is flying off the shelves.

in a 2017 report, greenpeace warned: ‘About 60 per cent of today’s clothing contains polyester. the global consumption of synthetic fibres has literally exploded: from 2000 to 2016, the use of polyester by the global garment industry increased from 8.3million to 21.3 million tonnes annually.’

Microfibres from fleeces and sportswear made from synthetic materials are one of the most significant causes of plastic pollution in our rivers and oceans.

the ellen MacArthur foundation — a charity launched by yachstwoman ellen MacArthur and fashion designer stella Mccartney to campaign against waste — released a chilling report about the scale of the problem last year, concluding that the situation is now so bad that we are ‘eating our own clothes’.

expressed in those stark terms, it is a deeply unappetising thought. But it isn’t the only damaging consequence of our relentless dumping of yet more plastic into our oceans.

LArge plastic litter is an obvious problem — anybody who has been to a beach will have seen the mountains of plastic bottles, packaging and other items that have been washed up on the tide.

the key problem with plastics is that they are almost impossible to break down. rather than rotting, they eventually find their way back into the food chain in tiny pieces smaller than five millimetres known as microplastics.

there are two types of microplastic. ‘secondary microplastics’ refer to the tiny slivers of plastic produced when larger items are broken down by the sun and sea.

But there are also ‘primary microplastics’, which are pieces of plastic that are tiny before they get to the ocean — such as the microfibres from our clothes — which are estimated to make up 35 per cent of the primary microplastics entering our oceans.

the ellen MacArthur foundation’s believes around half a million tonnes of these microfibres pollute our oceans every year — 16 times more than plastic microbeads from cosmetics. to put these stark figures into perspective, this is the equivalent of more than 50 billion plastic bottles.

And this number doesn’t look like dropping. the amount of microfibres released into the environment as a direct result of washing textiles could grow to 0.7 million tonnes a year by 2050 — the equivalent of dumping 4 billion polyester t-shirts into the sea.

richard thompson, a professor of Marine Biology at Plymouth University who is known as the ‘godfather of microplastics’, has pinpointed just how much plastic is being released by our washing machines.

in a recent laboratory study, his international Marine Litter research Unit filled an everyday washing machine with separate loads of jumpers made from three different synthetic fabrics, and used a ‘micro-sieve’ attached to the drain hose to catch the fibres that were released. they found that an average UK washing load of 13lb can release 140,000 fibres from polyester-cotton blend, nearly half a million fibres from polyester, and more than 700,000 fibres from acrylic clothing.

in normal domestic conditions, these microfibres would have drained out of the washing machine and then travelled along with the rest of the household’s waste water to sewage treatment plants.

some of the fibres would have been intercepted when the water was treated, but some — due to their small size — would still have escaped into the environment.

Worryingly, even those which are filtered out can still end up polluting our planet if ‘sewage sludge’ — a by-product of water treatment — is used as fertiliser.

As rains fall on the fertilised fields, some of those fibres will be washed into rivers and streams, and from there into the sea. Once in the ocean, the microfibres are eaten by sea creatures such as plankton, shellfish and anchovies.

the fibres also end up in other fish which either eat contaminated fish or accidentally eat the microplastics themselves.

And, worryingly for us, studies have found they ultimately end up in seafood — particularly shellfish — consumed by humans. indeed, a Mail investigation this year found microplastics on every sample of fish tested from the eight major supermarkets.

scientists at ghent University in Belgium (a country where mussels and chips is considered the national dish) have estimated that the country’s average shellfish consumer could be eating a staggering 11,000 pieces of microplastic each year.

The team led by Professor thompson discovered in 2016 that one third of UK-caught fish were contaminated with plastic — that included haddock, cod, mackerel and shellfish.

fortunately, Professor thompson says that there is — for now, at least — no evidence to suggest that eating microplastics consumed by fish presents a problem for human health.

But with research into their effects on humans still in its early stages, nobody can afford to be complacent. changes are needed to create better, harderwearing clothes that last longer and are good for the environment.

A study by the italian national research council found that the number of plastic microfibres released in washing can be cut by almost a third using fabric softener, which reduces the friction between fibres — but greenpeace warns that it results in harmful chemicals entering our waterways.

More comprehensive solutions are needed and the commons environmental Audit committee has turned its attention to finding out how the fashion industry can remodel itself to be both thriving and sustainable.

there has been much research into developing textile fibres from alternative materials such as algae, banana peels and even milk — though the ellen MacArthur foundation says it is ‘unrealistic’ to assume that plastic-based fibres will be eliminated soon.

cynics will doubtless respond to the prospect of such a revolution by claiming: ‘i’ll eat my hat if that ever happens.’

But surely investing in new research is a more savoury alternative than continuing to ‘eat our clothes’ by filling the ocean with yet more plastic.