Weaving Voices

Episode 7

Shedding Plastic, Our Modern Wardrobes Impact on Oceans & Soils

[00:00:00] Rebecca Burgess: Be patient and open to learning what you think makes sense, might not.

[00:00:16] Rebecca Burgess: Those are the wise words of Timnit Kefela, a PhD candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the guest of this episode of Weaving Voices, a podcast that stitches textile traditions, economic philosophy in climate science into a quilt of understanding, designed to transform our thinking and actions, both as citizens and material culture makers and users.

[00:00:41] Rebecca Burgess: I am Rebecca Burgess, your host of this Whetstone Radio collective series, which aims to explore the nexus of modern day economic design and the contemporary creation and use of textiles.

[00:00:56] Timnit Kefala: I'm calling in from the unseated lands of the Chumash [00:01:00] people, which we colonially know as Santa Barbara, California, of which I'm a settler on. 

[00:01:06] Rebecca Burgess: Kefela is the co-author of a study titled Synthetic Microfiber Emissions to Land Rival Those to Water Bodies and Are Growing. In her early research, which she started in 2017, she looked at illuminating systems that are not readily seen by the human eye and are very hard to detect with our human senses.

[00:01:28] Rebecca Burgess: She'd researched the growth and pathogen control effects of leguminous associating rhizobacteria on non leguminous plants and the role of rhizobacteria on drought stress tolerance. 

[00:01:40] Timnit Kefala: The reason why I got into scientific research is because it gave me agency over problems that my community faced. So to give you context, I grew up in an agricultural economy in Kenya with drought was not something that was avoidable.

[00:01:56] Timnit Kefala: It was something that was very much a reality. Food rationing was [00:02:00] part of the program of that kind of stuff. And one thing that I learned while going into research is how I could potentially ask research questions that could address problems I didn't think I had agency over or that affected my community.

[00:02:15] Timnit Kefala: And that's kind of how I got into that. 

[00:02:19] Rebecca Burgess: Kefela says she was really fascinated when she entered a lab where they were looking at plant gene discovery and trying to figure out what different genes do in different plants. At the same time, she says it was really helpful. She saw how you could leverage connections that already exist in nature to potentially help address problems instead of increasing the chemical input load into the farming system.

[00:02:42] Timnit Kefala: The ethos of how I entered that research was very much being like the soil is a wonderful place. There are different players that play significant roles in ensuring that nutrients are available for the plants to survive, ensuring that we can be fed. How [00:03:00] can we leverage certain relationships between plants and microbes to develop something known as a bio fertilizer

[00:03:09] Timnit Kefala: to essentially take this microbe that has this great relationship with this plant and helps that plant break down or make the nutrients available to it in the soil and do that for another plant and see if it actually helps them too. Weather, extreme weather events or like certain things such as drought stress or salt stress, among other things.

[00:03:32] Timnit Kefala: So that to me was the start of it all , whereby I was like, oh wow, nature's pretty amazing. Why am I thinking about innovation in a way that is very much like I am taking something out there and bringing it into this space when I could look at what's in front of me and what's in nature, and leverage what I already see to help another problem.[00:04:00] 

[00:04:00] Rebecca Burgess: She described when she learned about microbes that have close relationships with leguminous plants, and what they do is they help to fix nitrogen, this mutualistic relationship, she said it was just amazing to understand how well these relationships existed and functioned without any human involvement.

[00:04:19] Timnit Kefala: One big question that was coming up in our lab at the time was how can we make bio fertilizers cuz we're noticing that they could be potentially larger when they have the presence of these microbes present in comparison to when they don't have the microbes present. And so we thought to ourselves, okay, potentially we could make a bio fertilizer of some sort, but also at the same time, we could see if they prep plants or prime them to withstand different stresses outside of just making them larger.

[00:04:51] Timnit Kefala: Because we noticed that their root morphology as well as like their root systems, were much more extensive. So we were like, oh, maybe this might be really helpful [00:05:00] in like making them withstand extreme events such as drought. What was really great about studying the unseen and rather studying, Nature and trying to leverage what nature already did best instead of trying to engineer it in a way that's very much like I have the best idea here, but rather learning from nature and trying to come up with solutions based on what we see in nature, is that I was humbled to understand that I need to learn more from what I see rather than coming in thinking I have the right knowledge to place into a system.

[00:05:37] Timnit Kefala: That, for me, was incredibly important. And also brought this desire within me to protect it and pay attention to certain things such as pollution and how that could potentially disrupt those beautiful relationships that already exist there, enjoying vegetation eating among other things that make it [00:06:00] very possible for us.

[00:06:01] Timnit Kefala: So yeah, that's, that's what I would say is the most important part of that. 

[00:06:06] Rebecca Burgess: Kefala says one thing that she learned a lot about during the process is that she doesn't know better than the natural world, and that sometimes what you think makes sense might not. She says it's about being really patient and being open to learning about what's happening before your eyes and your senses, rather than going in with the mindset of, this is exactly what I think is going on.

[00:06:31] Timnit Kefala: Engaging in science in a way that allows you to have agency over problems is one of the most fulfilling aspects of research. Because not only does it drive your curiosity, but at the same time it even provides a sense of purpose that I feel like a lot of people don't really know that they can do through applied science.

[00:06:56] Timnit Kefala: I will say that this kind of early research definitely gave me [00:07:00] like a sense of purpose and showed me how I could potentially learn from things. Definitely, it's like a learning process, but how learning and like learning how to make that information more, not palatable, but like more accessible, can really make a big difference in how people view science and how people view coming up with solutions to protecting the environment.

[00:07:28] Rebecca Burgess: I first came across Kefala's work by reading her paper, which she co-authored on microplastic fiber flows, much of which are generated from our clothing. I wanted to know more about what had motivated her and her co-authors to conduct this research. She mentioned she'd become curious after attending a microfiber summit

[00:07:47] Rebecca Burgess: where a large study was shared that had come out of UC Santa Barbara, that compared washing machine emissions as different washing machines were used to wash a synthetic fleece jacket. It really sparked a [00:08:00] conversation about microfiber plastic emissions and what this means for our environment. She says, one thing that kept coming up was how much we actually don't know.

[00:08:10] Rebecca Burgess: No one really knows how much of this plastic is actually out there. Several stakeholders emphasized that they need to be able to understand how much of a problem this really is. So a big motivator for her became to understand how much of these emissions are actually permeating terrestrial and marine ecosystems.

[00:08:31] Rebecca Burgess: A team was formed and everyone focused on different aspects. Kefala focused on emissions. 

[00:08:38] Timnit Kefala: What led to us being very motivated for this work is because we wanted to emphasize how much is out there to motivate not only policy makers, but other stakeholders in this problem to consider how this is very much a problem, because I feel like a lot of the time when the conversation came up, it was like, is it truly a [00:09:00] problem?

[00:09:00] Timnit Kefala: So this kind of work emphasized, Hey, there's a lot out there and this is only looking at it from the washing machine perspective and we need to pay attention to how much is going out into the environment and what that means for our environment, what that means for us when it comes to thinking about solutions moving forward.

[00:09:24] Timnit Kefala: So that is what our vision was, just trying to understand how much of a problem this was and trying to be able to motivate the different stakeholders to see that it is in fact a problem. 

[00:09:41] Rebecca Burgess: She said we need to strategize a way that requires everybody to be part of the solution, and this solution needs to be focused on limiting the amount of synthetic microfibers that are being emitted into our environment.

[00:09:53] Rebecca Burgess: So what exactly is synthetic microfiber, other than just a pollutant? For starters, Kefala [00:10:00] says microplastics are plastics that are less than five millimeters in size. A synthetic microfiber is made out of plastic, like polyester or nylon. She says There's also actually semi synthetics, which she didn't really cover in her study.

[00:10:15] Rebecca Burgess: And these are natural materials that undergo heavy, intensive chemical processes and then become less biodegradable by virtue of how they're treated, even if they started as a natural fiber from their origin. So from the manmade fiber perspective, we're looking at polyester, nylon, acrylic. Those materials are derived from fossilized carbon sources.

[00:10:36] Rebecca Burgess: So what we see in this is that we have this double whammy where both extracting material from the earth's lithosphere refining that creating emissions upon the refining process. Then we turn it into a textile and wear it and we're realizing that there's these emissions pathways that are occurring because of the use phase.

[00:10:56] Rebecca Burgess: The use phase, meaning how we're wearing and caring for our clothing. [00:11:00] Our bodies braid these materials as we wear them, and also they break down in our washing machines and dryers. All of that abrasion creates another pollution pathway. So it's not just the cradle and the birth of these materials, but it's their fate in between and the focus on the fate and impact of these emissions is an incredibly important and valuable contribution to science.

[00:11:24] Rebecca Burgess: So how did Kefala and her co-authors approach the scope of their research? To start, the years that they looked at were between the mass commercialization of plastic. This was from 1950 to 2016. This is where the data sets were strongest. 

[00:11:40] Timnit Kefala: How this project, or rather this model was conceived, was looking at these different global data sets that were regionalized, that were focused on apparel production, its use, as well as looking at extensive data on washing emission and retention rates.[00:12:00] 

[00:12:00] Timnit Kefala: Additionally, we also looked at how retention could play a role within the wastewater treatment process. Looking at wastewater treatment globally, as well as looking at sludge and biosolid management. So these different elements kind of came together, , and based on several meetings whereby we connected these data sets on apparel production, use, washing, as well as like the washing emission rates, retention rates through washing, as well as wastewater treatment and sludge, and by solid management initially just to kind of estimate how much is out there.

[00:12:38] Rebecca Burgess: In their paper, there's an estimate that the compounded annual growth rate of our uptake of plastic is assumed to be 5% annually at a global scale. What's interesting is that the co-author stated that there's been a 12.9% compounded annual growth rate in plastic fiber emissions.

[00:12:57] Rebecca Burgess: That is a lot of emissions, it's [00:13:00] worrisome. When it came to the emissions pathways, they were paying attention to water bodies, which is something that has been a bit more common when it comes to doing this research on these pollutants. Another thing they tried to emphasize, she says, is that the terrestrial environment remains understudied, and it too can be a sink for these plastic fibers.

[00:13:22] Rebecca Burgess: We're always thinking about these fibers entering aquatic environments, but we're not thinking about whether they might be entering our soils and land, and that's something that they spent a lot of time trying to underst. Especially looking at it from the perspective of sludge and biosolid management.

[00:13:39] Rebecca Burgess: Sewage sludge is essentially the semi-solid material that's often a byproduct of the wastewater treatment process. These biosolids are often treated physically and chemically to produce a nutrient-rich, semi-solid product that can be used depending on location and infrastructure as fertilizer on land.[00:14:00] 

[00:14:00] Timnit Kefala: What happens through the wastewater treatment process is that you have your solid settle out. It's not that they go all the way through, through the primary stage of your wastewater treatment process, you're gonna have like all the different solids that are entering settle out of which microfibers definitely are a part of that, right?

[00:14:19] Timnit Kefala: So they settle out into this semi-solid material. And it is then treated physically and chemically and it's like very nutrient rich and it's often thought, Hey, we can use this potentially as a fertilizer, which is super great, super awesome. If you think about it as it not having all of the solid things

[00:14:38] Timnit Kefala: we don't want in there such as microplastics and microfibers, definitely. And what happens though is like having that applied onto land is definitely a direct input of microfibers into the environment. 

[00:14:55] Rebecca Burgess: She points to a study in the early two 2000s in which the authors were trying to [00:15:00] come up with a proxy to semi quantitatively estimate the if and how much biosolid had been applied to a landscape.

[00:15:08] Rebecca Burgess: And they were looking for indicators to help them determine this. So they found that synthetic fibers in the soil are actually a good indicator to estimate how much of a biosolid application has been put on that soil. The fact that microplastic fibers have now qualified as a static indicator for biosolids shows that these materials are not modifying over time.

[00:15:32] Rebecca Burgess: They are biopersistent within our environment. 

[00:15:36] Timnit Kefala: The mission pathways here outside of water bodies that we thought would be very important to pay attention to is definitely terrestrial environments. As well as primarily looking at washing machines and the wastewater treatment process of potential sources or pathways for them to enter these systems.

[00:15:53] Timnit Kefala: But we did not really take into consideration other pathways that a lot of [00:16:00] literature is recognizing could play a role in the deposition of microfibers and microplastics, such as atmospheric deposition, which also does play a role in this. And there've been numerous studies that are emerging that find fibers coming from built environments, being deposited on areas that are not built environments or are more rural in nature.

[00:16:23] Rebecca Burgess: One thing they didn't take into consideration here that she thinks would be very important is the production phase and how much of that process in itself also is producing a number of synthetic fibers. It would be insightful to understand how that stage of the production is playing a big role into the amount that's emitted into our environment. At current,

[00:16:44] Rebecca Burgess: it's a very understudied space. But back to biosolids, it's a value to remind ourselves that they are applied to farmland. So, for instance, many members of fiber sheds nonprofit farm and ranch producer program receive [00:17:00] biosolids from the city of San Francisco's wastewater treatment facilities, and they apply them to rangelands.

[00:17:06] Rebecca Burgess: And in fact, a lot of biosolid material that comes out of urban areas ends up on surrounding farmland. It's just important to understand that contaminants that don't break down that are traveling through wastewater treatment plants are ending up in our soil. Biosolids themselves, minus the plastic fiber contamination, have value for these growers.

[00:17:28] Rebecca Burgess: Those that we work with do see benefits to their soil from the applications due to the nutrients that are contained in them. And yet there's this unfortunate irony in our community. These are the same growers who are producing natural fibers, wool, alpaca, and hides. And they often have a very hard time finding markets for their natural fiber due to being out-competed by the very cheap cost of the plastic fibers.

[00:17:54] Rebecca Burgess: And so there they are producing natural wool while their land is being contaminated by plastic microfiber. [00:18:00] This would not happen if we were accounting for the full cost of the production of the synthetic fiber. And to my knowledge, the fossil fuel and fashion industries have not received a bill from our local ranchers requesting cleanup fees for their soils.

[00:18:15] Rebecca Burgess: Huh. Maybe that day is on its way. I had read an analysis that there was an impact to soil microbial communities from plastic fibers that had entered terrestrial ecosystems. And I'd wondered what Kefala had heard about this. She admits this is an emerging space in the scientific knowledge base, but that knowledge is growing and the presence and the effect of these fibers are starting to be understood in the soil system.

[00:18:40] Rebecca Burgess: For example, she says it's been shown in some studies that the presence of these fibers could potentially alter the water retention within a soil system. And of course there's still a lot that we don't necessarily know, especially with the terrestrial systems, and this is exactly why Kefala's team thought it was very important to bring up the fact that [00:19:00] these textile contaminants are in the soil,

[00:19:02] Rebecca Burgess: we need to pay attention to them and we need to start understanding their potential effects. 

[00:19:08] Timnit Kefala: Especially when we're thinking about if it's going to be a negative effect or if it's going to be a positive effect or it's gonna be a neutral effect, we need to understand how much is out there to begin with.

[00:19:19] Timnit Kefala: Because toxicologists likes to say this a lot, the dose is what makes the poison. If there is a certain concentration of these that are present out there in the soil systems, are they disrupting like really awesome relationships between different players that make the soil system, the healthy soil system that it is?

[00:19:39] Timnit Kefala: Like, is it disrupting earthworms, which we like to call the soil system engineers, the engineers of the soil essentially. Are they affecting them? Are we seeing that they're having trouble interacting with these fibers, for example? Are they burrowing it further? Are they burrowing these plastics down a little bit [00:20:00] further as they're moving through these systems?

[00:20:04] Rebecca Burgess: One thing to note about microplastic fibers and plastics in general, she says, is that they're not just these inert polymers with carbon backbones. They have all of these additives that are put into them to give them desirable properties. She says there's a lot of different results that are coming out across different soil systems globally, which are showing us what these materials may be doing and what this means for us.

[00:20:27] Rebecca Burgess: She says she's playing a role in that research, but they're seeing that in some cases it's incredibly harmful, and that's something that we need to pay attention to. Her paper has opened the door for more research as good science typically does. This seminal work was about quantities, so I wondered if she could further help us understand the quantities that are being emitted through these pathways,

[00:20:50] Rebecca Burgess: based on the scope of what she researched. 

[00:20:53] Timnit Kefala: From our study, we estimated that between the years of 1950 and 2016, that 5.6 [00:21:00] million metric tons of synthetic microfibers were emitted just from apparel washing. And that pretty much half of this occurred during the last decade of that range being 2006 to 2016, and as you mentioned earlier, with a compound annual growth rate of 12.9%, which is pretty high.

[00:21:21] Timnit Kefala: So our estimation saw that water bodies received about 2.9 million metric tons. And to give you context also with this, is that microfibers within that size are incredibly light. So we're talking about if we were to try and do a back of the envelope calculation, we're talking about trillions of microfibers entering our environment.

[00:21:41] Timnit Kefala: And while the combined emissions to our terrestrial environments were about the same, with us seeing about 1.9 million metric tons entering our terrestrial environments and 0.6 million metric tons entering our landfills. 

[00:21:57] Rebecca Burgess: One thing they noted within this work is that the [00:22:00] amount we're seeing in the water bodies and the amount we're seeing in the terrestrial environments, if we're including landfill in those terrestrial environments, these numbers are pretty comparable between the pollutants in the water and the soil.

[00:22:12] Timnit Kefala: We saw to terrestrial environments, it was about 141.9 kilotons per year. For a landfill, we saw about 34.6 kilotons per year, and water bodies we saw about 167.2 kilotons per year. And one thing that we really wanted to note with this is that certainly there are different aspects that could play a role in the fates of these microfibers into the environments of which we really did look a lot into wastewater treatment and how wastewater treatment access would

[00:22:49] Timnit Kefala: play a role in like where they end up. And we noted that wastewater treatment is going to further shift synthetic microfiber emissions from water [00:23:00] bodies to terrestrial environments, especially if we're looking at Biosolid application onto land. That's something that we also wanted to kind of emphasize here.

[00:23:10] Timnit Kefala: That if we were to see more wastewater treatment access in these areas, and we see biosolid management being that you just apply it onto land, that the terrestrial environment emissions would actually be higher than that of water bodies. 

[00:23:25] Rebecca Burgess: The development of more water treatment systems is generating more sludge, and this is extending where these fibers are ending up.

[00:23:33] Rebecca Burgess: The terrestrial sink has become a more saturated sink. If we continue to do this water development and sludge development the way we have it, we will continue to see more of these pollutants in our soil. 

[00:23:46] Timnit Kefala: Essentially, what we're trying to say here is that there needs to be, not to say that there is an intentional biosolid management, there really is, but there needs to be an assessment of how they could potentially be a big input of [00:24:00] these microfibers into the terrestrial environment.

[00:24:02] Timnit Kefala: Not to say wastewater treatment is bad. It is very much good. We need it. We need it for our wellbeing. We need it for our environments for sure. But really it's more of looking at how biosolid management and sludge management plays a role in them being potentially a pathway into terrestrial environments.

[00:24:25] Timnit Kefala: Like how are we going to manage our biosolids and sludge in a way that is more mindful of those contaminants existing in there and having not want to introduce that into our soil systems. 

[00:24:37] Rebecca Burgess: So back to that compounded annual growth rate. The research again just noted that our uptake is increasing by 5% per year, but the quantity of microplastic fiber pollutants is increasing by 12.9% per year.

[00:24:52] Rebecca Burgess: So what does that mean in terms of metric tons entering the environment? Does that mean all those numbers, Kefala just [00:25:00] stated, would increase by 12.9% to those terrestrial and to those marine ecosystems per year? 

[00:25:07] Timnit Kefala: It would in that the amount of microfibers that are shedding are increasing. And we noted this in our publication too, that in 1950, 122 tons was how much we would see be shedding.

[00:25:20] Timnit Kefala: However, in 2016, we're seeing 360 kilo tons being shed. And the reason why that is, is because, first of all, we have quite a bit of apparel consumption that's happening right now. So microfiber shedding grew faster with the apparel consumption, and therefore the fiber in use stock. And so consumption growth definitely plays a big role in that, as well as having higher access to washing machines in 2016 versus in 1950. 

[00:25:50] Timnit Kefala: So those are things to also pay attention to that those would influence our values and what we see, that there is more access to washing [00:26:00] machines now than there were in 1950. As well as we're seeing this growth in consumption, which certainly I would say, certain industries such as fast fashion and such could also play a significant role in our microfiber shedding here. 

[00:26:15] Timnit Kefala: However, we did not evaluate that in the study. We just really looked at it from potential factors, being that there's more consumption of the clothing and that there is higher access to washing machines. 

[00:26:30] Rebecca Burgess: In all of the strategies I've heard to date from the textile industry itself, and even from some city governments, there's this push to create a voluntary use phase change, which would include putting our clothing in a bag before we wash it or putting filters on our washing machines, what would that do and what wouldn't it do? And where would emissions pathways still exist given the current set of solutions that we hear? 

[00:26:57] Timnit Kefala: I think there have been excellent studies, especially [00:27:00] that came out of University of Toronto that have looked at washing machine filtration and how that really does capture up to 90% of the fibers that you would expect in your washing machine process. 

[00:27:11] Timnit Kefala: Actually, I think it's higher than 90%, which is great. And I think, however, this is great to ensure that we have less microfibers that are entering our wastewater treatment processes because a lot of our washing machine water will end up going through those processes provided you live in a place that has that kind of infrastructure.

[00:27:31] Timnit Kefala: We would see less entering, say biosolids. We would see less entering our waters through the wastewater treatment process. However, I feel like one thing to note with these is that it's just a mere diversion of where they're going because what happens to the filters when you take 'em out? You take them into the landfill.

[00:27:49] Timnit Kefala: So it might be shifting how many microfibers we see ending up in the landfill versus how much we end up seeing in terrestrial or aquatic matrixes, [00:28:00] which is not any better, right? It's really more of like an out of sight, out of mind kind of situation. But I think it's helpful to ensure that it's not directly entering our environment just yet.

[00:28:11] Rebecca Burgess: She thinks it's great that we're taking into consideration what the consumer can do because it can definitely empower consumers to believe that they're doing something and they are, they are contributing to the solution. However, this problem requires a multi-stakeholder approach. Industry and legislation need to play a big role in this.

[00:28:31] Rebecca Burgess: She thinks there needs to be more of a cradle to grave perspective when it comes to a product. We must not assume that once it's within the consumer's hands that it's their problem.

[00:28:42] Timnit Kefala: When it comes to creation of garments, for example, being very intentional with the design and trying to see if you can create stuff that can be low shed or using materials that are not potentially harmful once they enter into the environment.

[00:28:59] Timnit Kefala: I like to say that [00:29:00] there needs to be a general assumption that whatever you produce is gonna end up in the environment and what happens to it when it's there. Is it gonna degrade over time or is it going to be inert? Is it going to leach out different toxicants that might be harmful to the environment?

[00:29:13] Timnit Kefala: These are things that need to be taken into consideration from the industrial perspective for sure. 

[00:29:19] Rebecca Burgess: She says another thing is that she feels like infrastructure plays a very big role in how these pollutants enter our environment. Do governments have the right infrastructure for people to divest from the plastics?

[00:29:31] Rebecca Burgess: That's another infrastructure question. Do we have access in a way that could be really helpful for people to divest from these plastics? More often than not, she says the answer is no. You cannot place the brunt of this environmental problem on a consumer. It really needs to be something that we do altogether.

[00:29:49] Timnit Kefala: Another good way that government just in general can play a big role is holding industry accountable for creating materials that do not [00:30:00] cause harm to the environment. When you're creating something, I think there definitely needs to be a lens, and I know this may be a cost-prohibitive lens, but it is a lens that is incredibly important.

[00:30:10] Timnit Kefala: About where this is going and why. And divert from the disposability aspect of your product. Are you thinking this person's gonna use this once and they're gonna get rid of it, or are you thinking this person's gonna use this for a certain amount of time in life and it could have a second life if we chose to give it a second life?

[00:30:33] Timnit Kefala: That's where I feel like consumer-based solutions often falls short because access plays a very big role into whether people can even engage in those solutions. So I think that it needs to be something that comes from an industrial and government perspective as well. 

[00:30:51] Rebecca Burgess: In conversation with people about this work, she points out that many ask what they can do, and she often says, "do what you can," especially [00:31:00] to the consumer. She believes it's incredibly unfair to assume that everybody has the same access to making different decisions. 

[00:31:08] Timnit Kefala: A cotton shirt's not that cheap, as much as we like to think that they are cheap, they're not that cheap. Stuff with natural fibers can be pretty expensive.

[00:31:17] Timnit Kefala: So typically what I tell folks is just like, be mindful of your consumption. If you have a black shirt, do you need another seven black shirts? As a person who wears a lot of black, this is something that I've had to confront myself. Whereby it's just like, do I really need another black thing? Just being like really mindful of how much you're consuming and if it's like synthetic fibers, because that's all you can have access to,

[00:31:39] Timnit Kefala: just being mindful of, of how you care for your clothing, I think plays a big role in this because like I said, I think it's just really hard to make an assumption that people are gonna have access to these different solutions we think are better for the environment, or rather we're seeing as better for the environment when they don't have access to it all together.[00:32:00] 

[00:32:00] Rebecca Burgess: Governments and industry need to think about the fate of these different products and what happens to them when they're in the environment, and how that could be harmful to everyone. Unfortunately, because of how inequity thrives in the deliberate architecture of inequity, consumers are being blamed for the brunt of this issue when that's not necessarily the case.

[00:32:18] Rebecca Burgess: We need to have an honest conversation about this and hold the people who can create the scale of change accountable. They need to help us tackle this problem, she says. That's something we need to have open, continued conversations about. I think those infrastructure investments are just ready and waiting.

[00:32:39] Rebecca Burgess: We could create more access to far cleaner biodegrading materials if we had more manufacturing centers peppered in rural communities where natural fibers are being grown and raised. The reason for why this is the case is that globalized textile systems while very productive in the volumes that they create,

[00:32:59] Rebecca Burgess: they're highly [00:33:00] inefficient in some critical ways. They do not have the aggregation distribution, and organizational systems in place to make use of the abundance of natural fibers that our communities are already producing. It leaves massive amounts of fiber underutilized. Much of the fiber we're producing grows in natural color and could be manufactured without the need for dye.

[00:33:22] Rebecca Burgess: But the only thing we allow through the large scale systems are white fibers so that we can dye them uniformly. The chemistry we see applied to textiles, we could be tackling that simultaneously through a myriad of mechanical spinning process changes, natural fiber blending options, and new green chemistries.

[00:33:42] Rebecca Burgess: And yes, there is room for textile corporations to start investing in natural fiber infrastructure, but also they have a role in bringing these materials to market in a way that's more accessible. Kefala says it goes back to the point that her scientific journey started with and continues to [00:34:00] explore, and that is what she sees already in place within natural systems is worth understanding more deeply and often we don't not need to try to do it better.

[00:34:11] Rebecca Burgess: So what's next for Kefala's research? What is she excited about and what is she moving toward? For starters, she is working toward completing her degree, which primarily focuses on understanding the sources, pathways, and fates of these different microplastics within the terrestrial environment. 

[00:34:29] Timnit Kefala: What I would really like to do next is actually one big part of this was understanding how they got there and how they're moving, and how we could potentially just come up with a way to limit their movement.

[00:34:42] Timnit Kefala: But the next step for me would be to understand now that I've understood the positionality of the problem, at least within the context of the built environment, thinking about what is it doing there, which is something that I think that actually drove me into this work to begin with because I was [00:35:00] involved in food severity efforts back where I was doing my master's and undergrad

[00:35:06] Timnit Kefala: in Camden, New Jersey and one thing that we always saw was plastics in our soils. So that's something that often made me wonder how is it getting there? And that kind of drove me to, to study this during my PhD. But my next question is, what does that mean that it's there, especially in the context of growing food

[00:35:28] Timnit Kefala: in cities and built environments where a lot of the time we do it, not cuz it's trendy, but because we need to feed ourselves. As well as thinking about what does this mean for our green spaces among other things. The presence of all of these plastics, microplastic, centering these systems. Is it a problem and a potential threat for our green spaces which

[00:35:52] Timnit Kefala: give us the very limited access to nature that we get. Especially being a kid from the city who grew up in [00:36:00] cities all my life.

[00:36:03] Rebecca Burgess: She adds that she wants to primarily focus on the built environment as she says, it's often abandoned. For communities like her own, especially in the United States she says it's incredibly important that we preserve and enhance healthy, urban, green spaces. We must ensure these spaces are pollutant free. It's getting hot out there, and we need to make sure that people have access to places to cool off and be in nature.

[00:36:30] Rebecca Burgess: My hope is that you took something away from this episode. Perhaps it makes you think about the clothing you buy or the volume that you're purchasing, or even how you're washing it. I hope you gained some knowledge and perspective from this episode, and I really appreciate you listening.[00:37:00] 

[00:37:02] Rebecca Burgess: This episode is made possible because of all the people who work behind the scenes on it. I'd like to thank my producer, Jennifer O'Neil, audio editor, Bethany Sands, an intern Maha Sanad. I'd also like to thank Whetstone founder Stephen Satterfield, Whetstone head of podcast, Celine Glasier, sound engineer Max Kotelchuck, music director Catherine Yang, associate producer Quentin Lebeau, production assistant Shabnam Ferdowsi and Sound intern Simon Lavender, the cover Art by Whetstone Art director Alex Bowman.

[00:37:37] Rebecca Burgess: You can learn more about this podcast at WhetstoneRadio.com, on Instagram and Twitter @WhetstoneRadio, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, Whetstone Radio Collective for more podcast video content. You can learn more about all things happening at Whetstone at WhetstoneMagazine.com.