“Plastic is shit,” stated Cyrill Gutsch, founder of Parley for the Oceans
during breakout session ‘Will Technology save Fashion?’ at “The oceans are dying
on our watch…You can blame everyone you want, but we need to change the
material in the long run.” By 2025, there will be 1 ton of plastic for
every 3 tons of fish and by 2050, the weight of plastic will overtake the
weight of fish – a deadly scenario in part caused by our clothing.
Materials, such as polyester and fleece, contains plastic microfibers which
are shed with every wash, polluting the oceans. In order to find a solution
to stop this source of plastic pollution, a global coalition has been
founded by the Plastic Soup Foundation from Amsterdam, the Plastic Change
from Copenhagen and Plastic Pollution Coalition from Los Angeles to launch
the campaign around Ocean Clean Wash. During the Copenhagen Fashion Summit,
the Danish Fashion Institute publicly joined the coalition.
“It’s a great honor to have the Danish Fashion Institute aboard with what I
hope will be the biggest alliance ever to stop a huge source of ocean
pollution,” says Maria Westerbos, founder of Ocean Clean Wash Campaign and
director of the Plastic Soup Foundation. Research has shown that a single
load of washing can shed up to twenty million microfibers.”We must all come
together to create methods and innovations to stop this as soon as we can,”
Westerbos continued. Since denim brand signed the Ocean Clean Wash charter
late last month, over 70 organizations, environmental leaders, and
scientists have signed a Declaration of Support for the initiative.
Together, all the signatories of the initiative aim to contribute to the
development of innovative solutions to stop the release of plastic fibres
from garments in the future.