Solution to microplastics from dirty laundry

An interesting idea that aims to prevent the pollution of water resources produced by laundry machines is being developed by the PolyGone startup company. Polygone is developing a reusable sheet that sucks microplastics from our laundry machines, so they don’t end up in the water supply. Microplastics in the water supply is a growing concern and serious environmental threat. According to marine chemists microplastics can nowadays be found in pretty much every water sample all over the world. It mostly comes from our laundry and is also being discovered in the guts of fish, shrimp, or even sea birds.

The company is founded by a team of women from Waterloo, Canada who have designed something that looks a lot like a dryer sheet for the laundry machine. This reusable sheet is dropped into the laundry machine with the dirty clothes and it attracts and traps the microfibres so they can be recycled. The concept product was presented at the annual AquaHacking conference at the University of Waterloo on September 10-13.

A prototype of the product is expected by the first quarter of 2018.