Also, I haven’t seen enough research on where environmental plastic comes from. While they’re are some benefits to just using less plastics, less packaging where we can, it would be much better to focus on the larger sources
Realistically what I’ve seen for larger sources of microplastics is:
industrial waste
tire dust
clothing
I already have a lint trap on my washer outlet and see there are a few filters meant to trap much of the manmade fibers that come off in the wash, to dispose of in the trash rather than back into the environment with treated wastewater. I have no idea whether that would actually be helpful but the filters aren’t that expensive, and it’s one of the few options under my control.
Increased standards on industrial waste cleanup are always a good idea. However a lot of this may be in undeveloped countries
If laundry is a significant source of micro plastics in the environment, we need to figure that out and add filters or something
We really really need to figure out something with tire dust, since it will continue to get worse as more people can afford personal transportation. I did read one article about filtering runoff near roads making a big difference but it was light on details and I’ve only seen something like that once