Conscious Chatter With Kestrel Jenkins

In episode 300, Kestrel welcomes Dr. Lisa Erdle, the Director of Science and Research at 5 Gyres, to the show. A microplastics researcher and lifelong sailor, Lisa is passionate about keeping waterways clean for wildlife and people. “A load of laundry can shed anywhere in the range of hundreds of thousands to millions of microfibers, depending on how you wash and what you wash. There can be 850 times more microfibers shed from a high-shedding item compared to a low, so the textile design really matters. And washing isn’t the only source of microfibers to the environment — we know there’s also dryers, carpets and upholstery, cigarette butts, wet wipes, there’s quite a long list. But the one that we know the most about, and one we have a solution for, is our washing machines.” -Dr. Lisa Today, we hear a lot about microfibers in our oceans and waterways, and how they are an issue we’re facing. There are consistent news articles out there about it. At the same time, the narrative is generally very much aligned wi