Natural fibres in these cleaning products could be worse for the planet than plastics

A new study has found natural fibres in wet wipes might be worse for the environment than synthetic ones.

Whether it’s the cardboard beds at the Olympics or the bar that only accepted beach litter as currency in exchange for rum cocktails, people are doing their bit to help improve our environment all over the world.

Wet wipes are an item that is constantly washed up on beaches and found in our waterways, but some companies are trying to reduce their harmful impact by making them out of natural fibres.

Viscose and lyocell are made from cellulose in wood and these fibres are often used in wet wipes rather than synthetic fibres made out of polyester, which originates from plastic.

But, uncertainty has been raised about whether they actually are actually better for the environment after all.

Winnie Courtene-Jones at Bangor University explained: “There’s a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to move away from fossil fuel-based traditional, conventional plastics and substitute those with alternatives, and there hasn’t been much testing of those other materials.”

In a study, Courtene-Jones and a team of colleagues tested the impact of viscose, lyocell and polyester on the soil as well as some animals that inhabit it, as microfibres are often inadvertently spread in soil by making their way into the wastewater treatment plants.

For the experiment, they exposed the Eisenia fetida earthworm to varying concentrations of the three substances – viscose, lyocell and polyester – in the soil.

After being exposed to high levels of polyester, around 30 per cent of the earthworms died after 72 hours. That figure rose to 80 per cent with viscose and sat at almost 60 per cent for lyocell.

At lower concentrations, like those typically found in the real world, they found that earthworms’ reproduction rates were lower when exposed to viscose or lyocell than they were when exposed to polyester.

“Bio-based fibres may [be] better at production time, because they’re not based on fossil fuels, but there’s no clear vision on whether they’re better at degradation time,” Caroline Gauchotte-Lindsay at the University of Glasgow told New Scientist. “They have a place, because we still need to replace the fossil fuel industry, but it’s important to know the message isn’t that they’re better once they’re in the environment.”

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