textile waste, largely, is plastic waste.

Nearly all of the clothes you can buy contain a decent amount of plastic (elastane, polyester etc are just nice names for plastic).

in fact, I’ve been trying to buy plastic-free clothing for a few years (ever since micro-plastic was linked to diminished testosterone & fertility in men) I am finding it difficult, you often have to buy luxury and even then it’s no guarantee.

fast fashion is by far the worst offender though.

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peterfirefly 2 hours ago | parent [-]

So is rayon... kinda. It's cellulose from trees and other plants, without the original cells.

Where is the dividing line between cellulose, lignin and "plastics"?

	▲	dijit 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		rayon is a regenerated cellulose fibre: it biodegrades. polyester is a thermoplastic polymer synthesised from petrochemicals: it doesn’t. that’s the dividing line. one breaks down in the environment, the other persists for centuries and sheds microplastics into waterways every time you wash it. rayon has its own environmental problems (deforestation, chemical processing), but “is it plastic?” is not one of them. the chemistry here isn’t ambiguous.