Opinion | How Hong Kong’s nastiest plastic pollutant – microfibre – hides in plain sight

Name: SCMP Explains: How does Hong Kong handle its waste?
Uploaded: 2021-10-28T01:15:13.000Z
Duration: 6 min 47 s
Description: SCMP Explains: How does Hong Kong handle its waste?

Synthetic microfibres, mainly shed from polyester clothes, are the most common microplastics in Hong Kong’s waste water

While studies elsewhere show microfibres being ingested indoors and from eating seafood, little is known about the effects here

Reading Time:3 minutes

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Used clothes at a recycling facility. Every time we load up a washing machine with clothes made from polyester or other synthetic fibres, we release anywhere between 640,000 and 1.5 million pieces of synthetic microfibre. Photo: Shutterstock

Philippe Li

Published: 9:15am, 28 Oct 2021

China recently published its ambitious five-year plan to curb plastic use, encourage alternatives and reduce plastic environmental pollution. Hong Kong has echoed this sentiment in its updated Climate Action Plan 2050.

One form of plastic hidden in plain sight – and the most problematic and widespread, accounting for 35 per cent of all the plastic polluting the oceans – is synthetic microfibre. It’s smaller, easier to ingest, harder to clean and could have more far-reaching consequences than previously thought.

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), commonly known as polyester, is a synthetic fibre widely used in clothing and can be derived from either virgin or recycled plastics. Polyester accounts for 52 per cent of the global fabric market, and around 13 per cent of polyester production is recycled, mainly from PET bottles.

Research published in Nature magazine estimated that every time we load up a washing machine with synthetic clothes, we release anywhere between 640,000 and 1.5 million pieces of synthetic microfibre. Globally, an estimated 190,000 tonnes of microplastics are being released from synthetic textiles into the ocean every year, and would take more than 50 years to degrade in the environment.

The situation in Hong Kong reflects this global ecological disaster. One study showed that microfibres account for most of the microplastics that flowed into a waste water treatment plant, and most likely came from the washing of textiles and degrading plastic packaging.

06:47

SCMP Explains: How does Hong Kong handle its waste?

Although sewage treatment plants in Hong Kong can filter up to 95 per cent of all microfibres, the volume being released is so vast that too many microfibres still end up in the ocean – effluents from both the Stonecutters Island and Sha Tin sewage treatment plants confirm this grim reality.

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