A groundbreaking laboratory study has found that fashion’s pivot to recycled polyester may be doing more environmental harm than good. Research published by the Changing Markets Foundation reveals that recycled polyester creates significantly more microplastic pollution than virgin polyester, yet another reason to treat the textile industry’s sustainability claims with suspicion.
The study, conducted by the Microplastic Research Group at Cukurova University in Turkey, found that recycled polyester sheds 55% more microplastic particles during washing than virgin polyester. Even more concerning, these particles are nearly 20% smaller, making them more capable of spreading through ecosystems and potentially causing greater environmental damage.
Testing garments from major brands including Adidas, H&M, Nike, Shein and Zara, researchers discovered large variations in pollution rates. Nike’s recycled polyester clothing proved most problematic, releasing more than 30,000 fibres per gram during washing cycles—nearly four times H&M’s rate and more than seven times Zara’s.
In a particularly damning finding, some Shein garments labelled as recycled polyester showed shedding rates identical to virgin polyester, leading investigators to suspect the fast-fashion giant may have mislabelled virgin material as recycled.
The Economics Behind Synthetic Dominance
The report highlights a troubling statistic — polyester costs half as much to produce per kilogram as cotton, making it the economic foundation of fast fashion. Since 2000, polyester has become the dominant fibre in global fabric production. Shein, which releases thousands of new clothing lines daily, uses polyester for 82% of its products.
This cost advantage has driven overconsumption. Today’s average consumer buys 60% more clothing than in 2000 but keeps it half as long. An estimated 120 million tons of clothing were discarded last year alone, with a single laundry cycle releasing up to 900,000 microplastic fibres into waterways.
The Cukurova research reveals that current polyester recycling systems can process only around 2% of all recycled polyester used in fashion. Meanwhile, the industry competes with the drinks sector for waste plastic bottles — a sector that has demonstrated genuine circular economy success through repeated bottle-to-bottle recycling.
Perhaps most tellingly, despite the industry’s promotion of recycled polyester, virgin polyester production is growing so rapidly that the share of recycled content actually decreased last year.
The findings provide fresh evidence for natural material advocates who have questioned synthetic alternatives’ environmental credentials. Unlike petroleum-based synthetics that fragment into persistent microplastics, natural materials like leather are biodegradable and don’t contribute to oceanic microplastic accumulation.
The leather industry has faced sustained pressure from synthetic alternatives marketed as “sustainable” or “eco-friendly,” yet this research suggests such claims deserve greater scrutiny.
As consumers become more aware that “recycled” doesn’t always mean “sustainable,” natural materials that have served humanity for millennia deserve renewed consideration in the conversation about fashion’s environmental future.
The full report, Spinning Greenwash: How the fashion industry’s shift to recycled polyester is worsening microplastic pollution, is available here.
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