Within the bottle processing plant in Reidsville, North Carolina, drifts of plastic particles, like snow banks, are piled in each nook of the equipment that chops the bottles into flake. Once I ask our tour information, a flooring supervisor, if he worries about respiratory it in, he says he does not. “We do a superb job of cleansing it up,” he says, including that the baggage of mud which might be vacuumed up are bought off, and the wastewater is filtered.
However I’m involved. A 2023 examine of a UK plastics recycling plant discovered that even after the set up of state-of-the-art filters, round 6 p.c of the plastic being processed was launched into the wastewater as micro and nanoplastic, whereas the air across the facility was filled with microplastics sufficiently small to be hazardous to human well being.
Scientists are nonetheless puzzling out what microplastics do to our well being, however one examine discovered that individuals with IBS tended to have extra microplastics, together with PET and polyamide (of which nylon is one kind), of their intestine. Whereas PET appears to be one of the benign out of all of the plastics, no less than two research have discovered BPA, a hormone-disrupting chemical, in polyester child clothes, and quite a few manufacturers agreed to a settlement with California lawmakers in 2023 over the presence of BPA in polyester athletic shirts.
As well as, water utility managers in Reidsville have alleged that Unifi and different polyester producers might be doubtlessly be sources of 1,4-dioxane, a possible human carcinogen, within the Cape Concern watershed, which supplies consuming water for over 1 million folks because it flows from central to southeast North Carolina. Technically, that’s not unlawful (particularly since Unifi, together with different industrial sources and a number of other cities, efficiently lobbied towards a North Carolina rule limiting 1,4-dioxane in wastewater). As a result of 1,4-dioxane is a byproduct of producing PET resin, the EPA declared in late 2024 that just about any publicity to 1,4-dioxane constitutes an unreasonable danger to the well being of polyester staff and surrounding communities. There are (very pricey) methods to deal with wastewater for 1,4-dioxane, so how ensuing laws would have an effect on Unifi stays to be seen, particularly because the EPA doesn’t at the moment appear eager to do any regulating of poisonous chemical publicity.
Ingle and Boyd each declined to talk intimately about these points. In individual, they cited the recommendation of Unifi’s counsel (BPA), stated Unifi follows all laws (1,4-dioxane), or pled ignorance (microplastics). Comply with-up inquiries to Boyd went unanswered. Ingle responded to follow-up questions by way of e mail by writing, “We keep lively participation in The Microfibre Consortium, in an effort to help educational and trade analysis into the supply and affect of fiber fragmentation from textiles into the pure setting.” And “We’re compliant with all native, state, and federal laws for all of our websites.”
To advocates, every micro-scandal is proof that there is no such thing as a environmentally pleasant polyester. “We won’t do that sustainably in a unhazardous means, it is actually unimaginable,” Pecci says.
However I left the Repreve plant questioning if we’re letting excellent be the enemy of excellent American jobs. Polyester will proceed to be in demand, and it’ll both be made right here in a compliant manufacturing facility utilizing recycled sources, or overseas in a sketchy manufacturing facility utilizing recent petrochemicals. Pecci says she doesn’t wish to “name out that firm or these folks, as a result of they is perhaps the nicest folks on this planet doing one of the best they will with what they’ve.” She described for me a utopia through which unhazardous and pure clothes is all made right here after which composted and recycled right here. Sounds attractive, and unimaginable.
In February of this 12 months, Unifi introduced it was closing its Madison, North Carolina, polyester processing plant. It could ship a few of its equipment to its Latin American crops, and supply the Madison workers new job alternatives on the Yadkinsville and Reidsville crops, which stay in service.
For now, anyway.
