...and ~35% come from the clothes we wear. No clothes, no cars, sign me up.
this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2026
550 points (98.6% liked)
Fuck Cars
15554 readers
613 users here now
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
Rules
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
4. Stay on topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.
Posting Guidelines
In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
- [meta] for discussions/suggestions about this community itself
- [article] for news articles
- [blog] for any blog-style content
- [video] for video resources
- [academic] for academic studies and sources
- [discussion] for text post questions, rants, and/or discussions
- [meme] for memes
- [image] for any non-meme images
- [misc] for anything that doesn’t fall cleanly into any of the other categories
Recommended communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I mean we could just go to cotton or other organic materials for clothing
If you go with no plastic and no animal-based, turns out warm clothing is quite difficult make.
Can we though? Like, sure, as a personal choice, I could prioritize clothes made from non-plastics (and I do, though not religiously), but is there enough cotton and such available on the planet to meet every individual's clothing needs? Because if we want to talk about it at a "reducing microplastics being generated" level, that's what's required in the end.
Plus supply and demand means that prices follow demand, so everyone doing this will drive up organic based clothing prices and drive down plastic based clothing prices.
Not saying we shouldn't try to adjust our individual patterns, just that it gets more complicated as it scales up.
Yeah but where's the fun in that?
I've avoided synthetic fabrics for years. People used to think I was just being a woowoo anti-science luddite hippy (this was back before microplastics were a well-known phenomenon). But the fact is I just didn't like the texture of synthetics.
Here are some examples of natural fiber, all of which are lovely:
- Linen - made from flax; lightweight, airy, dries quickly. Great for summer.
- Bamboo - made from bamboo. Feels like a dream. Softer than cotton, lighter than linen, smooth as silk. Sustainable. Not even crazy expensive.
- Micromodal - made from beech trees. Similar to bamboo, but even softer.
- Rayon - made from cellulose. Often used in blends to impart softness and elasticity. Many different kinds. Bamboo and micromodal might technically be kinds of rayon. Also known as viscose.
Non-vegan:
- Sheep's wool - Many varieties. Soft, warm, comfortable even when wet. Great for winter (and hiking socks!). Can be felted due to the properties of the fiber. Comes in a range of qualities, but low quality wool can be itchy.
- Alpaca - Like wool, but softer, sturdier, and warmer. More expensive than wool.
- Kashmere - made from a species of goat fiber. Very very soft. Also expensive.
- Mohair - Different kind of goat wool. Haven't tried this one personally so I can't describe it.
- Angora - Made from rabbit wool! Also haven't tried this one, but supposedly it's very soft.
- Yak - Suuuper warm. Durable. Not as expensive as you might think.
- Silk - Soft, smooth, shiny. Also non-conductive and low-friction! Tends to be expensive, though.
And of course, cotton is versatile and has a wide range of qualities (depends on growing region, thread count, and processing methods. Pima and Egyptian cotton are supposed to be the highest quality, but are also more expensive. Organic cotton is best for the environment).
Here are just some examples of fabrics you can make with cotton:
- Jersey knit
- Terry cloth
- Flannel
- Denim
- Satin
- Muslin
Be sure to check the tags though: many "cotton blends" contain polyester, and often they label something "flannel" when it's just polyester with a plaid print (real flannel is a type of fabric, not the pattern on the cloth. If you can't see the individual threads that make up the pattern, it's not real flannel, just a print).
Final note: most fibers can be either knit or woven, with textures depending accordingly. There are sooo many different kinds of wovens, each with its own unique pattern. Could write a whole textbook just on different kinds of weave.
You missed hemp. I've only the one shirt and haven't worn it much yet but it seems similar to linen. I'll find out as it gets warmer.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(7 replies)
Everyone thinks nudity is great until they remember how the average person actually looks
load more comments
(1 replies)
Clothes particles go right into the water, not air so much
I think this should be a big deal because we can probably do something about it. microplastics from clothing ought to be controllable by pollution regulations on manufacturers and filters on clothes washers
Or buying more clothes with natural fabrics
I’ve been considering the filter idea because it’s something in my control but it’s unclear if currently available Ones are effective
Edit: checked my water treatment since it’s supposed to be among the most advanced, and nope. It does not measure or treat PFAS or microplastics, and it sells treated sewage as fertilizer.
I see those contaminants are mostly blamed on leachate from landfills but that just narrows to the source where we should be doing something
buying more clothes with natural fabrics
Cotton, wool, linen, and leather as well as re-learning to mend and alter clothes instead of everything being fast and disposable. I feel like I'm in crazytown every time I go shopping, there's so much god damn plastic everywhere.
That's why I buy clothes made with polyester! No plastic here! In fact I don't think I've ever seen clothes with "plastic" as a material before...
Polyester is plastic.
Or are you being sarcastic? (I hate that this rhymes, it was totally unintentional...)
load more comments
(17 replies)
Citation needed
Stupid lemmys driving cars into playgrounds.
Don't tell me how to take a shortcut to work.
That’s one of those facts you never think about… makes you realize pollution isn’t just exhaust, it’s everything around it too.
Well, no, we don't know that & that's prob false, it's just all plastics.
Tire microplastics just get circulated faster bcs they get grinned to a fine powder as part of their initial use (& that float gets flushed away with water). And the stat is stated for water or air.
Which is a problem, I'm just saying that we are producing a much larger scale of this problem that we can currently detect (and detecting microplastics is still in it's infancy even in lab conditions).
But sooner or later all petroleum based (non-biodegradable) plastics get to be microplastics, we just won't be around to see it.
Microplastics are the sedimentary boundary that will mark the current extinction event in rocks.
You can weigh new tires and compare them to weights of replaced tires. That would give you the low end estimate environmental tire microplastics deposited based on tire sales. I can't imagine its not a massive number.
Yes, it is. But compared to all plastics production it's not a third. Much like clothes aren't a third either.
But they both release microplastics directly into the air & water, so they enter the circulation quicker. The printer that is gonna end on a landfill will be in the balls of creatures millennia from now.
load more comments
(7 replies)
That's why I don't use tires. Raw dog the road.
There are some people who do that. Just driving on the steel rims of their cars. But they usually take it a step further, driving on roads that are also made of steel.
Source? Heard this before and not surprised, but I'd like something concrete that I can point to.
It seems to be even higher, several studies suggest it's closer to 50%:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c05002
Three different studies predicted emitted tire wear proportions (TWP and TRWP) of total emitted MP [microplastic] loads in the environment (both aquatic and terrestrial) for around 45%. (6,7,52) These calculations were mainly based on global, annual production data and matched the TWP proportions of around 40% in this study. However, since C-PVC was excluded here, a comparison of the percentages is not trivial.
load more comments
(1 replies)
And the severity increases with per axle weight
The OSHA permissible exposure limit (PEL) for benzene is 1 part per million (ppm) as an 8-hour time-weighted average (TWA), with a short-term exposure limit (STEL) of 5 ppm for any 15-minute period.
The benzene content limit in gasoline in the United States is set at 0.62% by volume, with a maximum average standard of 1.3% that took effect in 2012.
Are you swimming in your fuel?
Never got a drip on you filling up? There's 10,000x as much benzene in gas as OSHA alllows for expoure
Those OSHA guidelines are for gaseous phase. Which yes you're likely to get a high concentration even just pumping gas, but my guess is it averages out to within the limits. Seems weird to state liquid fractions.
It's because Benzene is so volatile that it will rapidly evaporate and then it's density is low enough that it spreads out so quickly that in a very short time it's no longer dangerous. You basically have to crouch down and huff by the fuel nozzle or be pumping gas in a small enclosed space for any significant health impacts.
view more: next ›