Anglian Services Ltd. Lancaster House, Lancaster Way, Ermine Business Park, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire PE29 6XU

Tel 01480 323 000 Ms Mary Creagh MP www.anglianwater.co.uk Environmental Audit Committee

Committee Office House of Commons 14 Tothill Street London

SW1H 9NB

31st August 2018

Dear Ms Creagh,

Environmental Audit Committee: Sustainability of the

Anglian Water is the water and water provider for over 6 million customers in the East of England, encompassing everything between the Humber and Thames estuaries and around a fifth of the English coastline. The region we serve includes over half of England’s Grade One agricultural land and is also one of the most ecologically diverse in the UK.

We welcome the committee’s inquiry into the sustainability of the fashion industry. Clearly, it is a wide ranging topic, however, our comments will largely be related to the waste from fashion in the form of plastic fibres lost when synthetic clothing is washed.

While the inquiry’s terms of reference touch on a number of pertinent points regarding the waste from fashion, we feel the need to highlight the impact of microplastics from clothing fabrics which are not covered within inquiry’s lines of questioning.

When clothing items are put in the laundry, thousands of microplastic particles from the synthetic clothing fabrics away in the wastewater. According to a Plymouth study, each washing machine cycle can release around 700,000 microscopic plastic fibres into the environment1. These fibres bypass

1 ‘Single clothes wash may release 700,000 microplastic fibres, study finds’, The Guardian, June 2016. Taken from: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/sep/27/washing-clothes-releases- water-polluting-fibres-study-finds any washing machine filters and pass through processes owing to their size, ending up flowing into the natural environment.

To be clear, these microplastics are much smaller than the ones covered by Defra’s ban on microplastics in cosmetic products which came into force this year. In fact, the Open University notes that microplastics originating from clothes in washing machines may in fact be the biggest cause of microplastic in our waters2.

Of course, there is much research to be done to examine exact impacts and there is much more to be done in the way of developing new approaches to combat this emerging challenge, such as new filtering technologies3. However, we reiterate the evidence you heard in the committee’s 2016 report into the environmental impact of microplastic.

By far the most effective way to tackle this issue is prevention at source. Clothing manufacturers have a role to play with their choice of materials they use in their products. Of course, we support any change in process or use of alternative materials that helps reduce the amount of microplastics in the environment. However, any such change in approach must not simply transfer the environmental harm to another area, such as increased water demand in water-stressed areas, like the East of England, or create additional or new from different manufacturing processes. Additionally, washing machine manufacturers have more to do in the way of improving the filtering on their products.

A collaborative approach between the manufacturers of clothes and washing machines, and the water industry is crucial to reducing the amount of microplastic fibres entering rivers and marine . Having worked with companies, like GlaxoSmithKline, to trial the latest technology and behaviour change psychology on issues, like water consumption within our Shop Window in Newmarket, we believe that there is an opportunity to do something similar with clothing manufacturers. We would welcome the opportunity to do so and are already planning to engage with the sector as part of our wider plastics strategy for our region.

2 ‘How your pile of laundry fills the sea with plastic pollution’, Open University. Accessed August 2018. Taken from: http://www.open.ac.uk/research/news/how- your-pile-laundry-fills-sea-plastic-pollution 3‘Inventor hopes washing machine filter will save oceans from microplastics’, Sky News, June 2018. Taken from: https://news.sky.com/story/inventor-hopes- washing-machine-filter-will-save-oceans-from-microplastics-11397669 If you have any questions about the points raised in this, do not hesitate to contact either myself or my colleague Jacob Wallace in our public policy team at [email protected].

With many thanks and best wishes,

Dr Lucinda Gilfoyle Catchment and Coastal Strategy Manager