Is Polyester Bad for the Environment?

Flaunt your brand new polyester gym wear in front of your eco-conscious friend and watch them back up in disgust. To the typical sustainable fashion advocate, polyester is like the toxic villain we don't just need to avoid but vehemently kick out. But is it that bad?

Polyester is sweat-wicking, wrinkle-resistant, and easy to get stains out. These qualities can make anyone wish to stuff their wardrobe with more polyester, which makes up an estimated 60% of all garments in the world. And thanks to modern textile technology, polyester can be woven to mimic virtually any fabric: faux fur, suede, wool, name it. But all of that comes at a huge environmental cost.

Despite its fashion-friendly properties, polyester is harmful not just to the environment but to your health as well. Ready to see the dark side of this versatile piece of fabric?

Come along.

What is Polyester, Anyway?

Polyester is formed in a chemical reaction by combining terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol (both petroleum products) to create a long-chain polymer called polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Yep, the same stuff used to make plastic bottles. This polymer—aka polyester—is then spun into yarns and you get your synthetic fabric.

I don't need to spell it out, but the fact that polyester originates from petroleum already makes it a turn-off, eco-speaking. But it gets worse.

Let's talk about it in detail.

The Environmental Impact of Polyester

Polyester Promotes Overproduction and Waste

Once upon a time, linen and other high-quality fabrics like silk were reserved for the elite because of their rarity and labor-intensive production. To grow these organic fabrics, you need arable land and must wait for the plant or silkworms to mature. It screams rare. Which was a good thing, in retrospect. Because ever since polyester synthesis was discovered in 1941, textile production has surged, leading to overproduction, overconsumption, and waste.

Of course, it is cheaper and quicker to process fabric from petroleum than it is to cultivate and wait for a flax plant to grow. Being able to produce fabric at lightning speeds at a textile factory also eliminated the limitation of land availability. Given this ease of production, it's not hard to see why there's cheap, fancy clothing at every store you pass by.

In fact, approximately 60% of all garments on retail shelves are polyester. Also, the average consumer buys 60% more clothing than 15 years ago but keeps them for half as long. Thanks to the cheaper price tag and lower quality.

Microplastics from Polyester are Toxic

Do you know that anytime you wash, tiny pieces of the fibers break down and leach into the water? If it's organic cotton, the tiny pieces will also be organic, i.e. safe. You get the idea what that means for polyester.

When you wash polyester clothing, tiny pieces known as microplastics shed into the water. Between 200,000 and 500,000 tons of microplastic from textiles enter our waterways every year, as reported by the European Environment Agency. We lose about 100 million marine lives annually, thanks to microplastics. The Mediterranean Sea continues to mourn the lives of the thousands of animals dying in it as we continually dump our plastic waste there.

It gets worse, though. I mean, really.

When you wear a polyester shirt, these tiny fibers also break free into the air, which you may inhale, putting you at risk of cancer. So it’s not just the animals.

Polyester Promotes the Use of Toxic Dyes

Since polyester isn’t great at absorbing natural dyes, manufacturers rely on toxic chemical dyes to get those bright, bold colors you see in fast fashion.

The problem? These dyes often contain harmful stuff like lead, mercury, and other heavy metals, some of which are carcinogenic (cancer-causing). These toxins are mixed in water during the dyeing process, resulting in tons of contaminated water. And when brands are churning out clothes quickly and cheaply, they usually don’t bother treating the wastewater properly.

That toxic dye runoff ends up in rivers and streams, and marine lives die from the polluted water. What's worst is, textile production is mostly done in developing countries where clean drinking water doesn't always come easy. The dye runoff makes available water even more scarce.

Textile dyeing accounts for 20% of global water pollution, and dyeing synthetic fabrics like polyester is a big reason why. Fast fashion makes fancy clothing accessible, but the environmental mess it leaves us is is not a very good tradeoff.

Polyester Isn't Biodegradable

Unlike cotton, linen, silk, and other natural fabrics that decompose within a few months to a few years, polyester is not biodegradable. So that new polyester gym wear you just flaunted will add to an already sky-high textile waste in the next few months (great if it lasts you more than a year), and it will remain there for the next hundred years before it completely breaks down.

And because polyester doesn't biodegrade and turn into nutrients, what you get when it breaks down is microplastics, tiny materials that persist indefinitely in the environment. The extended existence of toxic waste from polyester makes this fabric particularly bad for the environment.

So why not just recycle it? Oh well...

Polyester Isn't Very Recyclable—Practically

You hear of recycled polyester all the time. We even listed it as one of the most sustainable fabrics. All that is true. But plot twist: recycled polyester isn't a product of recycling your polyester clothes.

Recycled polyester is derived from recycled PET water bottles, not polyester fabric. While there's potential for recycling textiles, a stack insufficiency in the systems and infrastructure required exists. For starters, it is easier to produce new polyester through a chemical reaction in a lab than it is to collect and process used polyester garments efficiently.

On the other end, polyester fabrics are often blended with other materials and dyes, making recycling too labor-intensive, costly, and impractical.

Bottom line? It all goes to landfill. Or incinerated. Releasing harmful gases into the air. Speaking of gases...

Greenhouse Gas Emissions and High Energy Use

At virtually every stage of a polyester garment's lifecycle, it's either consuming energy or purging harmful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Think climate change.

Let's start at the beginning. The chemical reaction required to create polyethylene terephthalate only occurs at high temperatures, around 280-300 °C. How do factories attain this temperature? By burning fossil fuels to power systems in their manufacturing plants.

Burning fossil fuels releases greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere and cause global warming. The same thing happens when you incinerate your old polyester fabrics because you can't recycle them.

So…

Is Cotton Worse Than Polyester?

Conventional cotton isn't all that great; pesticide use, high water consumption, and land degradation mar its sustainability. But when grown organically or sustainably, it has a lower carbon footprint than polyester. Moreover, cotton is biodegradable and recyclable, unlike polyester.

While it takes about 2700 liters of water to make one cotton t-shirt, a polyester one poses a bigger environmental threat overall, talking about water pollution and greenhouse gases. It is estimated that a single polyester shirt has a carbon footprint of 5.5 kg CO₂e, compared to 2.1 kg CO₂e for a cotton shirt.

In a Nutshell... Why is Polyester Bad for the Environment?

Polyester is made from fossil fuels, produces massive greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, pollutes our air and water, doesn't biodegrade, and leaves behind deadly microplastics in its wake.

Is Polyester Bad for You?

A friend of mine at the gym used to complain about an unpleasant smell around her crotch after workouts. She later told me her dermatologist advised her to switch from polyester gym wear to cotton ones. You guessed right: Her problem vanished.

The thing is, while polyester is pretty sweat-wicking, the fabric is tightly woven and doesn't allow proper ventilation. It traps sweat and bacteria, leading to the familiar musty smell around the groin. Not very healthy, if you ask me.

Should You Avoid Polyester Altogether?

Not necessarily. If you already own polyester, keep wearing it (unless of course, you experience breathability and odor issues like my dear friend). Simply discarding new polyester creates more waste problems. You may also go for second-hand pieces or recycled polyester. Try to wash clothes less often, synthetic or otherwise, and use microfiber-catching laundry bags.

Better Alternatives to Polyester

Sustainable fabrics are better alternatives to polyester. Sustainable fabrics include:

• Organic cotton
• Linen
• Hemp
• TENCEL™ / Lyocell
• Wool
• Recycled polyester

These fabrics are more biodegradable (except recycled polyester) and have a lower overall environmental impact. At Ichcha, we use only sustainable fabrics for making clothes, scarves, and even table linens.

Learn more about sustainable fabrics in this blog.

 

FAQs

How does wearing polyester affect the planet?

Wearing polyester affects the planet through the microplastics it sheds into the environment whenever you wash it. And when it gets too old to wear, it creates a waste problem since polyester doesn't biodegrade.

Is polyester a good fabric?

Polyester is strong, very affordable, and easy to clean, making it a good fabric fashion-wise. But when it comes to environmental impact, it's not so good.

Where did polyester come from?

Polyester was invented by British chemists John Rex Whinfield and James Tennant Dickson in 1941 by combining two petroleum products terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol in a chemical reaction. But it wasn't until the 1970s that it became popular as a clothing material, thanks to its wrinkle resistance, low maintenance, and affordability. This gave rise to fast fashion.

What is recycled polyester?

Contrary to what you might think, recycled polyester isn't made by recycling polyester fabric. Recycled polyester (rPET) is derived from waste plastic bottles by melting the plastic and spinning fibers out of ot.

Is recycled polyester eco-friendly?

We consider polyester eco-friendly because it reduces waste by keeping plastic bottles out of landfills. At any rate, recycled polyester is still plastic, so it sheds harmful microplastics into the environment just like virgin polyester.

How harmful is polyester to the environment?

Polyester harms the environment in numerous ways, from oil extraction and CO2 emissions to the billions of microplastics shed throughout its lifecycle. And when it wears out, it hangs around for hundreds of years since it's non-biodegradable.