Need a bit of help with being environmentally friendly

I don't know the answer if they have come to the end of their lives, but I suppose one thing we can do (and you may well be doing it, so I can add a lesson on sucking eggs if that would help!) is to wear our clothes for as long as we can rather than have a new outfit every five minutes. If they don't fit any more, or you really can't stand them any longer, someone else can get the good of them if you put them to a charity shop.

Another thing would be to buy natural materials where possible. Wool and cotton would compost. Organic cotton still uses a lot of water, but not the pesticides that non-organic cotton uses (so presumably pleasanter for the farmers to produce).

I have to admit to having learned quite recently that viscose is not another plastic but is made from plant material

Thanks for the reply. They haven't come to the end of their life at all but if washing them puts hundreds of microfibres into the water system I thought I ought to give up wearing them!

That's interesting about viscose.

Oh and if I put them in a charity shop someone else will just buy them and wash them..

This is so hard!

Oh yes, I'd forgotten about that. Isn't there some advice about washing them in a pillow case to catch the bits and then I suppose you empty the pillow case into the bin...

Carry on wearing them or recycle them via charity shops. Wash them less often and don't buy any more. I think that's all we can do really.

That said, in the planetary and geological long term I'm not worried about plastic microfibres. I think Nature will find a way to deal with them. Obviously I could be wrong but Nature has dealt with as bad and worse already and the main basic ingredient of plastics is oil, which is organic.

Whether human beings and other current species will adapt and survive plastic is a separate issue from what I've said above and is what, I think, most people are worried about.

I have spent my adult life trying to live as ethically as possible, it is not easy or straightforward. Our take is that you do the best you can. Read up about it, decide what works for you, or most interests you, and do that. Keep informed so that if things change you can too. Don't get too hung up about it.
This helps us:
It is better to light a candle than complain about the dark
Take pleasure in simple things
Use your common sense

You're right, Nannarose. I know a lot of us pick up litter when we're out. Obviously we can't pick up every bit, but every can or plastic bottle that we pick up and recycle is one more not going to landfill, and at least it's a little bit we can do.

Wow, I didn't know that about fleece, but I just googled it.

Our house has a septic tank, so we're not putting fibres into the water system, but maybe the tank's getting clogged with them?

This is very interesting and very worrying. The other day when I washed a pair of DGS’ joggers my black trousers in the same wash came out covered in tiny little threads, I hadn’t thought of the danger to fish when the water is released into rivers etc., jus5 moaned that I would have to wash the ,y trousers again.