6 Dressed in Plastic The Persistence of Polyester Clothes

It is common to view clothes as cultural and symbolic objects. And, though clothes have social lives (Appadurai 1986), they also have biological and chemical lives (DeSilvey 2006). Clothes are a provisional gathering of matter and materials, formed and unformed by their movements in and with social and physical situations. How such materials are held together in constellations—as clothes—signals one moment in their productive lives as objects (Stanes 2018). Perspectives on both objects and materials as “fixed” or “static” have been troubled by a range of varied scholarly traditions, including geography, science and technology studies (STS), material culture, and political ecology. Drawing from empirical cases—including aluminum (Sheller 2014), e-waste (Lepawksy and Mathers 2011), asbestos (Gregson, Watkins, and Calestani 2010), and (notably) plastics (Meikle 1997), including polyethylene terephthalate (PET) water bottles or plastic bags (Hawkins 2010, 201), nylon (Handley 1999), and bioplastic (Tonuk 2016)—an overarching theme in this debate is that materials come to be via various iterative processes made possible in and through different subjects and practices. However, to date, the seemingly static world of clothing has mostly evaded attention. Here I am interested in the wearable factors at the surfaces of polyester clothes: durability, strength, and appearance. I am equally interested in the processes that underpin the “interconnectivity and co-constitution” of polyester clothes (Tolia-Kelly 2013, 153), their persistent material geographies, and their vital capacities to “set into motion relationships between things that become sites of responsibility and effect” (Gabrys, Hawkins, and Michael 2013, 5).

Endorsed as a “minor miracle” with “quick drying, non-iron, permanent press qualities … and neon colours” (Schneider 1994, 2), polyester became widely popularized across Britain (Terylene), the United States (Darcon), and Europe (e.g., Trevira in Germany) in the post-war boom during the 1950s and 1960s. Advertised as a technological solution to issues of scarcity of and “nature’s shortcomings” for clothing and household fabrics (Blaszczyk 2008, 86),⁷ polyester fabrics were seen by industrialized nations in the minority world to lessen their dependence on the variability of natural textile producers (Schneider 1994). Polyester now makes up over 50 percent of total textile consumption globally, over double that of cotton (Textile Exchange 2018). It is a material that has both shaped and been shaped by the rise of fast fashion. Polyester is the only fibre over the past twenty years to have increased its market share, and it is predicted to grow 4 percent annually to 2020 (Pensupa et al. 2017; Textile Exchange 2016). The expansion of polyester over the past two decades has radically challenged the market viability of other fibres. The price of cotton, for instance, has fallen by 25 percent over the past ten years (Textile Exchange 2016). Relatively low and stable oil prices and recent changes in the global trade of waste have also suppressed developments in recycled and biobased fibres (Textile Exchange 2016; Textile Exchange 2018).

Polyester now sits alongside other plastics “emblematic of economies of abundance and ecological destruction,” pollutant, toxic, and persistent well beyond the afterlife of the object for which it was originally made (Gabrys, Hawkins, and Michael 2013, 3). Some of these issues are unpacked in the sections that follow. However, unlike plastic bags or water bottles, in which the derivation is upfront, and frequently a site of political contestation (Hawkins 2009, 186), polyester appears to be other than their petroleum-based relations. Because of their chameleon-like character, polyester fabrics evade consumers’ critical scrutiny. This is not to label polyester a “bad” material (Liboiron 2016, 89; see also the introduction to this volume). Rather, the challenge as posed in this chapter is to further understand the heterogeneity and complexity of polyester’s transformations and in turn how they affect bodies, habits, and ecological awareness (Hawkins 2010). By arbitrarily imposing a directionality to polyester, I identify moments of its transformations: that is, how polyester interacts with other places and things and how they trouble the geographical boundaries of clothes.

Derived from the Greek words polús méros for “many parts,” polyester (like other plastics) is made from chains of thousands of molecular units called monomers (derived from the Greek words mono méros for “one part”) (Freinkel 2011, 5). Perhaps the most common polyester used in the clothing textile industry is the polymer poly(ethylene terephthalate), otherwise commonly known as PET. In its most basic material form, PET is coarse, rigid, and a slightly transparent, off-white shade. But polyester polymers do not become polyester fabric “in isolation” (Liboiron 2016, 95). Hundreds of polyester varieties exist. Polyester polymers can be manipulated easily to produce desired characteristics of dyeability, resistance to mildew and aging, flame resistance, static-free quality, and comfort (Wright and Pugh 2015). To manifest the material characteristics of polyester—flexible, soft, vibrant, fluffy, or light—various monomers, additives, or plasticizers are added at different stages of the production process (Fries et al. 2013; Scheirs and Long 2003). Adding a delustrant such as powdered titanium dioxide (TiO2), for instance, removes the gloss of polyester and creates a slightly rougher surface on fibres, reducing sheen and transparency and increasing opacity (Windler et al. 2012). Others additions might improve or modify appearance, elasticity, mechanical or thermal resistance, durability, or performance (Fries et al. 2013; Napper and Thompson 2016). Indeed, the length of polyester molecules via the addition of chemical additives defines “plasticity”: its flexibility (Freinkel 2011, 5).

The process of making monomer components into polyester materials can be carried out in several ways. A mechanical approach to polyester fibre production, for instance, grinds and melts hard and inflexible plastic chips before extruding hot liquid through fine spinneret holes. This approach is also used in the recycling of other PET materials (e.g., plastic bottles) to create polyester fibres. More commonly, the (re)production of polyester uses a chemical process of repolymerization, producing textile material of a much higher quality than mechanical methods (Shen, Worrell, and Patel 2010). However, though simple by design, at the time of writing only 2 to 5 percent of polyester used in clothing is produced from recycled materials such as plastic bottles or ocean plastics waste (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2017; Textile Exchange 2016). Regardless of the plastic source used or the process, polyester fibres transform into textiles either by winding them at high speeds into fine filaments for weaving into fibres that resemble satin and silk or by combing, spinning, and knitting them into matte-finished fabrics that mimic cotton or wool (Schneider 1994).

The physical qualities of polyester are also achieved through various assemblages of its production: the relations among chemical manufacturers, global shifts in the price of oil, technological infrastructures of production, the knowledge and haptic awareness of comfort and aesthetics among clothing designers and makers, and increasingly changing environmental regulations (Tonuk 2016). It is also through these assemblages that an understanding of provenance, persistence, and transformation of polyester becomes possible.

Described by chemists as “bad actors,” some of the monomer, additive, and plasticizer components added for aesthetics or comfort are now understood to have harmful effects on bodies and environments since they “intervene in ‘natural’ systems” and can “change genetic material, easily travel and escape containment,” and “readily accumulate” in environments (Liboiron 2016, 89; see also Chapter 2 of this volume). So varied are the chemical compositions of polyester that it can be difficult to trace them and their effects on humans and non-humans. Of particular concern are the possible effects of microplastics, the residual effects of plastic monomers, and endocrine disruption, described further below (Gabrys, Hawkins, and Michael 2013; Liboiron 2016; Napper and Thompson 2016). Also, many of these additives and compounds are resilient and resist biodegradation, so they have long decay times (Fletcher 2014; Li, Frey, and Browning 2010). Because of the variety of polyesters, dilemmas arise about how producers, consumers, and environments might cope with the unknown impacts of these materials.

The instances described here, in which the materials are evaluated only in terms of the product forms, tell but part of the story of how the qualities of polyester are both fixed and challenged and how they become known as “problematic.” In the next section, I review the interactions of polyester, as clothes, with wearers. Unlike other forms of PET, such as those commonly known in plastic bags or water bottles where its plasticities are haptically detectable, the plasticity of polyester fabrics is rarely acknowledged, unclear on clothing labels, or unknown among consumers. Through their affordances of feel, texture, durability, and/or (dis)comfort, interactions with polyester force us to look beyond clothes as coherent, singular objects and toward the component materials and innate capacities of polyester that exemplify an entirely different set of plastic materialities.

Consumers are confronted with the material qualities of polyester daily, but rarely is it recognized as plastic (Stanes and Gibson 2017). Where organic textiles such as cotton or wool are actively marketed as “natural”, the “derivation of polyester is passively concealed” (Stanes and Gibson 2017, 28). Fabric engineering and manufacture, and garment design typically hide the plastic provenance of polyester, not mentioning it on labels and thus deceiving wearers (Stanes and Gibson 2017). Furthermore, the complexity of textile chemistry means that, even if one is comparatively well attuned to the properties of clothing textiles, a wearer can never be certain of where, how, and with what polyesters have been made (Küchler 2015, 268). Polyester is chameleonic in its tactility, mimicking or approximating the “natural” feel of organic fibres.

My doctoral research revealed a range of complex embodied engagements between consumers and polyester: from attachment to disgust, comfort to discomfort, pleasure to deception, nonchalance to neglect (Stanes and Gibson 2017). I used the varied haptic experiences of clothing⁸ to explore how clothes felt at different points in their prosaic biographies, from purchase to wear, from wardrobe to washing, and ultimately to their deterioration. To be clear, all twenty-three wardrobes contained polyester. It was in underwear, trousers, dresses, blended with cotton in t-shirts and jumpers, and it materialized most obviously in collections of second-hand clothes. And though polyester was always present, there were mixed perceptions of what it should feel like or which clothes should contain it. Composed of layered and added compounds, polyester often appealed to the senses as light, flexible, and soft, its composition measured by an embodied and sensory perception of comfort (Hebrok and Klepp 2014; Stanes and Gibson 2017). The properties and performance of polyester were also shaped by personal ideas of durability, quality, aesthetics, affordability, and luxury. Such haptically informed ideals often render the plasticity of polyester undetectable. And with the derivations of polyester concealed, its mimicking properties manifested a type of “material ambivalence” (Stanes and Gibson 2017, 31).

Equally, the plastic provenance of polyester was veiled by trademarks and brand names. Polar fleece, for instance, was often mistaken for wool. Lycra is so normalized as a high-performance fibre for athletic wear that its inorganic origins were rarely realised. Accompanying Lycra were a host of additional high-performance textiles whose names evoke both high-tech science and a degree of bodily comfort (Stanes and Gibson 2017). Polyester in this form was celebrated by young adults for its performance. The technical aspects of active wear, for instance, allow people to achieve a particular vision of fitness. And though the durability of polyester is deemed suitable for work or exercise, this is less the case for everyday wear, in which different configurations of comfort, class, and materiality prevail (Stanes and Gibson 2017). Polyester, then, conjured up feelings of joy or discomfort based on the context of its use.

With wear, wash, and decay, our bodily relations with clothes reconfigure (Stanes 2019). Such material and temporal changes unfold in different ways. Some polyester clothing–body relationships reconfigure noticeably, such as when a garment warps or no longer fits after being altered by the contours of the body. Likewise, the body can encounter discomfort from friction with the skin, such as when polyester fabrics bobble or pill (Stanes 2019). Other changes in the texture of polyester clothes can be so microscopic that it is impossible to “feel” them with our bodies.

As polyester garments are washed and worn, the weakening of the polyester filaments leads to more rapid breakup, contributing to greater fibre release during laundering, as shown in Napper and Thompson’s (2016) investigation of microplastics fibre release during washing. It is these polyester transformations that contribute to microplastics pollution. The accumulation of microplastics, including monomers, additives, and plasticizers that leach from polyester clothes, are now known to contribute to global plastics pollution (see Chapters 1 and 12 of this volume), and this is where polyester’s component materials work together in harmful ways (Liboiron 2016; Rochman et al. 2019). For instance, because of their polarity, microplastics act as absorbent vessels, attracting oily chemicals such as pesticides and flame retardants (Liboiron 2016). Thus, when consumed by marine or aquatic life, both the original polyester monomer and the absorbed chemicals accumulate in tissues and travel up the food chain. Although more research is needed, some plastics are known to be associated with endocrine disrupting chemicals (Rochman et al. 2019). They are known to mirror, compete with, or disturb the synthesis of endogenous hormones, with risks for metabolic problems, hormone-sensitive cancers, and birth rates in humans and non-humans (Gabrys, Hawkins, and Michael 2013; Liboiron 2016; Rochman et al. 2013). Thus, even when polyester clothes are repeatedly used, much loved, and cared for, their residual effects and very plasticity continue to transform in use.

As scientists continue to expose the lingering environmental implications of polyester, clothes that contain polyester are beginning to acquire an identity and politics more common to plastic bags and water bottles. California recently published a bill proposing that clothing that contains more than 50 percent polyester have a label stating that “this garment sheds plastic microfibers when washed, which contribute to marine plastic pollution” (California State Assembly 2018).⁹ Polyester clothes, it seems, are being transformed from desirable to “destructive matter”; although such campaigns animate the materiality of polyester and human relations with it, they also deploy “a command morality” designed to remind consumers that polyester clothes are “now problematic” (Hawkins 2010, 119). Wearers of such clothes have been compelled to act with some responsibility. Patagonia (2017), for instance, now sells a “guppy bag” designed to trap polyester microfibres during laundering. How much this political “microplastics” moment drives change in the consumption of polyester remains to be seen.

The insights here on the blurred boundaries of polyester clothes in use propose a kind of refusal to view polyester as if it exists in isolation to sensorial, emotional, and evaluative engagements. In light of new evidence of polyester’s capacity for microplastics pollution and long decay time, this prompts a rethinking of how the challenges of polyester clothing can be conceptualized and confronted. The “problem” of polyester becomes not just a question of the materials involved and the forms that it takes but also of the troublesome ways in which people relate to these materials as parts of their wardrobes and everyday domestic routines (e.g., doing the laundry or exercising).

Because polyester is made from petroleum, it signals a lingering and indefinite material and temporal process of environmental degradation (see also Chapter 5 of this volume). However, unlike the accumulation of microplastics discussed above, polyester accumulates in other ways: as unused and unwanted clothes. Globally, roughly 73 percent of clothing disposed of annually is incinerated or landfilled (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2017; Norris 2017; Textile Exchange 2018). It is estimated that just 20 percent of the world’s used clothing is collected. Of that 20 percent, 55 percent is recovered for second-hand economies, 40 percent for down-cycling initiatives, and 5 percent is returned to landfills as waste (Rhoades 2016, cited in Norris 2019).¹⁰ Of clothes donated directly to second-hand networks, up to 75 percent contain human-made fibres such as polyester.¹¹

My encounters with young adults who buy, use, and dispose of clothes in the minority world revealed that polyester or polyester-blend clothing was the most common textile to amass, unused, in wardrobes (Stanes and Gibson 2017). Polyester, it turns out, is not so easily disposed of. In some cases, there was a reluctance to dispose of such clothes because of their persistence, having neither fallen apart nor worn out but no longer aesthetically pleasing. Such clothes sat idle in wardrobes. Others had anxieties about how best to get rid of polyester clothes deemed too worn for reuse but not completely worn out. Such examples illustrate that disposing of unwanted garments can be an emotionally fraught venture because of polyester’s durability.

Of the polyester garments and textiles that do reach landfills, a new series of material temporalities emerges. The slow decomposition of polyester is difficult to track because of complex chemical compositions and trade-offs in the fabrication of clothing such as manufacturing quality, fabric thickness, and material composition. In landfills, a different set of interlocking temporal factors determines decomposition: how much waste is added to the landfill, how long it takes for the landfill to become closed, and the time it takes microbial life to break down synthetic fibres (Reno 2015). In any case, the decomposition of polyester is far from its end point. Other long-term factors are connected to polyester degradation, such as the leaching of additives and plasticizers that contaminate air, soil, and groundwater in landfills. Polyester, then, persists—in wardrobes, in second-hand economies, as slowly decaying detritus in landfills, and as microfragments in air, water, and soil.

The problems of polyester have provoked some responses. In this final section, I turn to how the persistence of polyester is being (re)valued, namely based on different interpretations of the circular economy. The holistic approach to the circular economy has become one of the most dominant conversations in the sustainability of the fashion industry to date (Norris 2017). The plastic materialities of polyester have been of particular focus. Driven in part by the visibility of fast-fashion brands, including H&M’s “conscious campaign” or Zara’s “Join Life,” textile recycling has emerged as one solution to extend the life of polyester clothing. High-street fast-fashion retailers have taken on the responsibility to collect clothing donated in stores (often with resulting discounts for consumers) and resell, reuse, or recycle it. Critiques of such campaigns have followed. A tiny fraction of clothes, less than 1 percent, is actually part of fibre-to-fibre recycling schemes (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2017), and the transparency of recycling initiatives has provoked a series of questions. What proportion of clothes is resold? What kinds of recycling techniques are used? Which actors are involved in recycling or repurposing clothes? What is the process?

Notwithstanding the critiques above, there is more positive evidence that the (re)production of polyester is disrupting waste hierarchies, extending the material plasticity of polyester, and moving it from waste to resource. In 2005, Patagonia’s Common Threads program worked with Japanese company Teijin to reprocess its own polyester fleeces into polyester filaments. Elsewhere, Dutch label aWEARness works in partnership with companies to ensure circularity across a range of polyester work wear garments. Disruption has also occurred in the recycling of other forms of PET. Denim company Gstar RAW partnered with Bionic Yarn in 2014 to harvest plastic microwaste from oceans and waterways to use as feedstock for denim fibres, extending the temporal capacity of plastic while also absorbing and concealing the material waste in new garment materials (Binotto and Payne 2017). The Thread Ground to Good program is also actively downcycling PET bottles into polyester fibres while also paying plastic bottle collectors in Haiti and Honduras a fair working wage. Although largely in their infancy and small in scale, such programs have positive signs of textile innovation and waste recovery, ranging from the development of less toxic human-made materials to new technologies that can transform old polyester clothes or PET materials into new garments.

Nonetheless, many of these initiatives are critiqued as promoting a “myth of reuse and recycling” (Cobbing and Vicaire 2016, 5; Ellen McArthur Foundation 2017, 20). To date, the technologies required to recycle polyester are not advanced enough to do so en masse. Because of the complicated chemical makeup of polyester, multiple processes are required. Moreover, it remains technically complex to recycle clothing made of blended natural and human-made fibres. Because of the various material components of polyester textiles, the ability to process large volumes of material quickly while also being commercially viable still appears to be a few years away. An underlying concern is that clothes taken back through high-street recycling initiatives will sit hoarded within factories. Crucially, all of these initiatives skirt around a core issue in the use of polyester: subsequent laundering and care of these recycled polyester garments will still leach microplastics into oceans and waterways.

A challenge set out in this chapter was to trace the unruliness of polyester from monomer combinations to their everyday use, storage, divestment, reuse, and recirculation. Rather than a sense of directionality, the ongoingness of polyester highlights the relations and relationalities of polyester clothes, their transformation, and their persistence. Polyester, as described here, has traversed many routes: toward the choice of garment textiles and the toxicity made known via textile science; haptic engagements and material interactions of consumers; the multiple temporal and spatial scales of fashion markets and the messy and complex injustices of fast fashion; and the prolonged materialities and temporalities of polyesters (un)assembling in wardrobes and second-hand markets, in landfills, in oceans and waterways, in air and soil, and in bodies. Polyester has material and temporal impacts that go well beyond the imagined realm of everyday consumer culture. And though there have been recent technical, structural, and institutional interventions—from collection and recycling schemes to new products intended to “catch” microplastics from clothes during washing—such responses stem from new knowledge about the troubling future of polyester. Such efforts, according to De Wolff (2017, 42), are “always exceeded by the indeterminacies” of polyester’s entanglements and “the vibrancy of plastic matter,” for “there will always be more plastic to separate.”

Understanding the vitality of polyester and clothing made from it is one starting point for unleashing more novel ethical, political, and environmental understandings of the otherwise opaque geographies of clothes. Indeed, viewing clothes as inert objects that move between “wear” and “waste” merely “feeds human hubris and our earth-destroying fantasies of conquest and consumption,” and the very assumption of clothes as inanimate matter “may be one of the impediments to the emergence of more ecological and more sustainable modes of consumption” (Bennett 2010, ix). As polyester has revealed, the objectification of materials hides their disturbing natures. Even scratching the surface of polyester’s transformation and persistence, as I have done here, allows new questions to emerge, opening up new possibilities for material politics of clothing and plastics, investigations of contemporary consumer cultures, and assessments of everyday ethics and responsibilities.

1. 1. Following Gabrys, Hawkins, and Michael (2013, 2), my interpretation of plasticity includes both the tangible properties of polyester—as a plastic—and the ways in which polyester itself is a material process of transformation, giving way to varied environmental and bodily accumulations across its production, circulation, and pollutant capability.
2. 2. To compare the carbon dioxide emissions of cotton and polyester, Cobbing and Vicaire (2016) based this calculation on the same percentage of each fibre used in apparel textile production.
3. 3. Notably, this figure is based on calculations from the clothes laundering routines of households that use standard plumbed washing machines. Two-thirds of households globally wash clothes with methods other than washing machines (Gibson et al. 2013).
4. 4. This chapter draws from ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2013 and 2015 with twenty-three young adults from Sydney, Australia. Participants were recruited via advertising in local media and snowballing methods. Ethnographic data were collected via shopping go-alongs, participant diaries, photo elicitations, sketches, and reflexive field notes. These sources combined provided an ethnographic portal into the everyday microgeographies of clothes use, the unspoken rhythms of wearing in and wearing out clothes, and their unruly associations. I acknowledge the privilege implicit in this dataset, including how clothes are purchased, worn, and disposed of. It is my intention not to universalize the modes of consumption represented here but to give a certain representation of the use and wear of polyester at a certain moment in time.
5. 5. Appadurai’s The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective addresses the relations and relationships between humans and the material world. It illuminates the varied ways that people find value in things and, conversely, how those things make and sustain social relations.
6. 6. The notion of “unruliness” is useful in describing the materials and practices of clothes use: animated, heterogeneous, rough-hewn, and unpredictable as opposed to their traditional alternatives as stable, linear objects bought, used, and divested.
7. 7. Dorothy Liebes, a textile designer and marketer for US-based DuPont, famously told the Kanas City Star that “sheep and goats can’t produce enough natural fibres for the mushrooming population of persons … and man-made fibers can help supply enough fabric” (cited in Blaszczyk 2008, 86).
8. 8. This research did not focus just on polyester clothing. Polyester, however, emerged as one particular textile that polarized wearers. It was a common source of guilt and shame: items that were bought on a whim, given as gifts, rarely worn, never worn out enough to justify throwing out, or never worn in, in that nice way that organic fabrics become softer, fading and aging gracefully with time. These items hung around in the backs of wardrobes or the bottoms of drawers, unloved yet unable to be discarded. Equally, polyester was loved for its strength and durability.
9. 9. The AB-2379 Bill for Waste Management: plastic microfiber was tabled for consideration, but the time of writing, the bill was inactive.
10. 10. Yet, as Norris (2019) notes, these figures vary widely, with approximately 40 percent in the United Kingdom and 14 percent in the United States.
11. 11. Research has uncovered a mixed story of vernacular creativity and pollutant labour in supposed “dumping grounds” of second-hand clothes, particularly in the Global South (Gregson and Crang 2015, 164; Norris 2015, 184).

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