One major source of that pollution is easy to overlook: on any given day, millions of washing machines hum in homes around the world. What most people don’t see is what flows out with every rinse cycle: microscopic plastic fibers shed from synthetic clothing, slipping through wastewater systems and into rivers, oceans and ultimately, our food chain. In Columbia’s M.S. in Sustainability Management (SUMA) and M.S. in Sustainability Science (MoSSS) programs, which are offered by Columbia’s School of Professional Studies in partnership with the Columbia Climate School, that invisible problem became a call to action.
As students in the SUMA program, Yoni Ronn (’23SPS, Sustainability Management) and Siddhant Srivastava (’23SPS, Sustainability Management) began asking a deceptively simple question: What if we could stop microplastics at the source?
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Based on research methods and technology developed at LDEO, Yan, along with colleagues Joaquim Goes and Nick Frearson, designed a microplastic filtration system for capturing fibers released during the laundry process before they enter waterways.
Crazy that there isn’t already a law requiring washing machine drains to have a micro-particle filter. We’ve known for a couple decades that a major source of microplastics is from clothing, and small particle filters have been around for centuries.
I think capitalism can solve this by marketing laundry microplastic filters as a way to get free 3D printer plastic filament to 3D print kids toys as an affordable way to entertain your family!
I can see the commercial in my head already.
There is a law in France, all new washing machine since last year need to have a micro-particle filter installed.
What you’re telling me is, this “groundbreaking” Columbia U project is already implemented by law in the EU? I guess somebody involved also invented a time machine.
That’s awesome!
Sewage treatment plants would be a good place as well. Also for testing plastic-eating organisms.
I’m for the centralized ‘pump it to the treatment plant’ idea. I know several people that just flush their dryer lint down the toilet.
