Amsterdam, 18 August 2018 – Since some days Waste2Wear textile products are for sale in Dutch shops. These products are made of waste plastic by Indian home weavers. Part of the waste plastic are bottles from the sea. This has multiple advantages: home weavers receive better pay, stray bottles are taken from the sea and there is more attention for the plastic soup.
The Waste2Wear website provides background information that indicates the need to reduce plastic pollution of the ocean. In support it says for instance: “Studies have also shown that thousands of pieces of microplastic are even consumed by humans through seafood and table salt every year.”
Many organizations are involved in the initiative. Waste2Wear, Chinese and Dutch universities, the Dutch Consulate in Shanghai, Chinese NGOs and a number of companies. They have jointly set themselves the goal to tackle the problem of the plastic soup through an innovative concept.
Waste2Wear may seem to be a sympathetic idea, but making textiles from plastic waste is not a solution. The website does not mention that those “thousands of pieces or microplastic” are to a large extent released byplastic clothing. When synthetic textiles are machine washed and dried, an average of 9 million microfibers are released in each 5 kilograms wash, according to a study that appeared last year.
Plastic Soup Foundation’s Managing Director Maria Westerbos: “We welcome the fact that attention is asked for the plastic soup, but the of Waste2Wear initiative is not a solution. The real solution lies in cutting back the use of plastic as a raw material. “
Plastic Soup Foundation releases the new and free Beat the Microbead app! The app uses machine learning software to read the list of ingredients on packaging and it can identify more than 500 different microplastics.
Without government intervention, there will never be a circular economy for plastics. The coronavirus pandemic is leading to meager oil prices. As a result, virgin (primary) plastic is available at rock bottom prices.
Companies don’t have to make promises because it is already legally mandatory. Since 1994, packaging has had to comply with so-called essential requirements laid down in the European Packaging Directive. One of these requirements is that the weight of the packaging is limited to the minimum required.
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