Microplastics in the oceans

Experts estimate that up to 12 million tons of plastic garbage is landing in our oceans every year. And even though our "western" industrialized world is clearly producing too much plastic, at least most European and American industrialized countries have reasonably functional waste disposal systems.

In Asia, on the other hand, infrastructure for collecting plastic and recycling it appropriately – if only as fuel for the production of electricity or heat – is often fully lacking.

Source: http://www.grida.no/resources/6931 (englisch)

Because our main production countries are in Asia, we are also responsible and have to do our part to help solve the problem. We are working to raise awareness among our suppliers for the issue and we want to support our partner, the WWF Germany in building a network of waste management systems in the Mekong Delta.

In addition to the larger pieces of plastic waste entering the waterways where they decompose very slowly, we as an outdoor brand have a particular problem: tiny fiber particles that are shed from our products are too small for normal filtering in sewage treatment plants and are entering the oceans as microplastics.

Because our products are usually made of synthetic fibers such as polyamide or polyester, we are unintentionally contributing to pollution in the oceans as well.

What makes microplastics so tragic is that not only are they extremely durable and take hundreds of years to decompose, they also don’t generally float at the top of the ocean but rather somewhere between the surface and the sea floor. Marine animals mistake them for food and end up starving with their stomachs full of plastic. As a part of the food chain, these plastics accumulate in larger animals and also end up in the food we eat.

Source: http://www.eunomia.co.uk/reports-tools/plastics-in-the-marine-environment/

Of course, we are concerned that our products are polluting the environment with microparticles. We want to tackle the problem at its roots: in the materials that we use. Either these materials shouldn’t shed any microfibers at all or what they do shed should be biodegradable... without any loss to functionality of course. We have already found some promising initial approaches that we are testing.

We have initiated a major research project to make joint progress in this area: The consortium project "TextileMission", in which VAUDE is actively involved, was launched on September 1, 2017. The aim of the research project is to reduce the environmental impact of microplastics that textiles made of synthetic fibers shed during household washing.

"TextileMission" will run for a period of three years and is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the funding priority "Plastics in the Environment – Sources, Reduction, Possible Solutions" with a budget of 1.7 million euros.

In addition to VAUDE, the following organizations from the sporting goods industry, the washing machine and detergent sectors, research and environmental protection will contribute their respective expertise to the project as project partners:

• adidas AG

• Bundesverband der Deutschen Sportartikel-Industrie e.V. (National Association of the German Sporting Goods Industry, BSI) as the project coordinator

• Henkel AG & Co. KG

• Hochschule Niederrhein - Faculty of Textile and Clothing Technology

• Miele & Cie. KG

• Polartec LLC

• TU Dresden

• WWF Germany