On would be the first to admit that it hasn’t been a leader in grappling with the issue of microfiber shedding in textiles. The Swiss company uses a wide range of fabrics, of course, but it’s primarily in the business of making performance footwear, which is laundered infrequently, if at all. Now, as it begins to ramp up the apparel side of its business, much of which relies on synthetic materials that slough off tiny bits of plastic every time they take a spin in the washing machine, it’s realizing that this attitude has to change. The question, said textile innovation lead Lucie Martinol, is how can it continue to pump out products “in a less worse way”?
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On Tuesday, innovation platform Fashion for Good and the multi-stakeholder nonprofit The Microfibre Consortium announced that On, along with Bestseller, C&A, Levi Strauss & Co., Gucci parent Kering, Norrøna, Paradise Textiles, Positive Materials, Zara owner Inditex and Under Armour, would be participating in what they describe as a “landmark” study to help build the industry knowledge needed to mitigate—and perhaps finally nip in the bud—the problem of fiber fragment pollution.
The issue is neither very old nor very new. It entered the public consciousness nearly a decade ago after a pioneering Patagonia-funded study found that washing a single fleece jacket can generate up to 250,000 microscopic fibers that slip past wastewater filters to inundate rivers, lakes and oceans, where they’re gobbled up by marine life and laddered up the food chain. And yet fashion, as a whole, has continued to chug along, even accelerating the use of polyester, acrylic, nylon and other man-made textiles that contribute to the microplastics strewn throughout the human body, including the brain and lungs.
A lot more attention has also been paid to end-of-pipe solutions that revolve around dealing with fiber fragments once they’ve escaped the garment—for instance, washing machine filters, which puts the onus on appliance makers and consumers—than to textile design and manufacturing. This despite the fact that certain stages, such as wet processing, are known to be major leakage points. In 2021, the Nature Conservancy and Bain & Co. estimated that for every 500 shirts made, one disappears as microfiber pollution during the production phase.
At the same time, the more scientists delved into the problem, the less they realized they know. Natural fibers like cotton, wool or linen, for instance, can also pose a threat if they’ve been chemically processed or dyed in a way that impedes their biodegradability or gives a free ride to harmful substances.
“For instance, if we coat a cotton with a PFAS forever chemical, will that actually degrade as fast as regular cotton, or will it more act like, for instance, a polyester?” said Janne Koopmans, head of collaboration at ZDHC, a signatory-based organization that is working toward zero discharge of hazardous chemicals for all products. “We don’t know yet, and I think that’s what we have to acknowledge as a community.”
Behind the scenes, The Microfibre Consortium has been busy. It worked with the University of Leeds to devise a standardized test method, now one of several quantifying fiber loss from fabric, whose manifestation brands and manufacturers had predicated future action on. Shortly thereafter, in 2021, it introduced the Microfibre 2030 commitment and then the Microfibre Roadmap to create and deliver an aligned agenda for the likes of Adidas, Gap Inc., H&M Group and Calvin Klein parent PVH Corp.
The goals, workstreams and timelines that these enabled significantly scaled up fabric testing to “generate deeper understanding” of fiber fragmentation, said Kelly Sheridan, the organization’s CEO. The Microfibre Consortium co-developed manufacturing guidelines with ZDHC, developed a reference point methodology for measuring microfiber generation in laundered fabrics, released a technical report zooming in on recycled polyester and opened a Microfibre Knowledge Hub to provide additional tools and resources. 2025 was supposed to have seen the launch of a Microfibre Global Rating system to help signatories adopt shedding limits more consistently. So far, however, this part hasn’t gone according to plan.
“The industry is not yet ready for implementation,” she said. “There are too many knowledge gaps we need to close before we’re able to really stand by and recommend science-led mitigation strategies. We need to embed fiber fragmentation into those sustainability strategies to start with. More broadly, we need to embed fiber fragmentation into existing platforms, into policy conversations.”
Last week, The Microfibre Consortium unveiled a 2.0 version of its Microfibre Roadmap that focuses less on nibbling around the edges and more on identifying and tackling the root causes of the problem. Sheridan said that even brands that have been “along this journey for a while” have stuck microfiber pollution into its own silo instead of “spreading it across the sustainability agenda.” There’s also a desire for quick fixes and low-hanging fruit that’s thwarted by the complexity and variability of textile production, where everything from the fiber mix to the twist of the yarn to the temperature of the dyebath can drastically alter how much a material sheds.
“We need an in-depth knowledge of the multiple fabric variables that influence fiber fragmentation, which will give us the insights that we need to create those effective solutions that we’re all craving,” Sheridan said. “We want to build on a much clearer understanding of the root causes in manufacturing, too, pinpointing those we can develop and then target strategies that go beyond that surface-level fix.”
“Behind the Break: Exploring Fibre Fragmentation,” the initiative that Fashion for Good and The Microfibre Consortium is kick-starting, is part of that effort. It seeks to nail down, through a report and a research project, the aforementioned root causes of three fabric archetypes—cotton knit, cotton woven and polyester knit—to understand which variables influence microfiber shedding. It’ll also look into how the different test methods stack up against each other in terms of consistency, reliability and accuracy. If the specifics are on the vague side, that’s entirely on purpose. The idea is for those involved to aggregate their resources, both financial and expertise-wise, but to leave room to follow where the science leads them.
“Right now, our hypothesis is that we will explore other variables and understand how they affect the shedding to keep on expanding and building on existing knowledge to either validate those assumptions or challenge them,” said Maria Arroyo i Bacete, innovation manager at Fashion for Good. “But actually, it could be that just by understanding the test method situation, and if we can rely on them, etc., we take another route, it goes more into the definition of better methodologies and practices to test microfibers or fiber fragmentation.”
But the main question the initiative seeks to unravel is this: What makes the fibers of one textile fragment more or less than another? The answer will become even more relevant if the European Union rolls the Product Environmental Footprint—and a potential microplastics impact category—into its proposed green claims directive. To date, the Microfibre Consortium’s signatories have tested and submitted data for nearly 1,500 fabrics, with no two fabrics providing the same results. Now there’s the opportunity to, as Sheridan put it, “really control the experiment” and add to what needs to be a portfolio of solutions.
“What I’m most excited about is we all have theories,” said Lewis Shuler, head of innovation at Paradise Textiles, the material science hub of Alpine Group. “We all have these assumptions about creating textiles with a lower propensity to shed. Like a fiber with a short staple length might have shedding issues, but we can’t say that for sure because if you do a really coarse yarn or you put it into a construction that doesn’t get peached or sheared, then maybe it’s O.K. And if we can control everything and understand all those processing variables and then test it, make it more reliable, then we’ve proved those theories out, but it’s going to take a very deep understanding.”
The findings could then build out learnings that inform how the industry designs textiles in the future, rather than basing decisions on one-off assumptions, he added. Ultimately, the goal is to deliver something replicable that can facilitate conversations between different parts of the supply chain or serve as a blueprint for other companies and organizations to conduct experiments of their own. Who pays for implementing changes or investing in new technologies, on the other hand? Now that’s a whole different problem.
“We are really performance-driven,” said Martinol of On. “There are a lot of parameters, for instance, fast-drying, cooling. And sometimes we do things like texturize yarns or brush fabrics. And right now there is no ‘Oh, if we do that, it’s going to be terrible, because we generate fibers. So let’s avoid that.’ So if we understand better, we can also design better.”
