CaliWoods · Journal
Every wash load sheds around 700,000 plastic fibres into the water
You do a load of washing on a Tuesday night. Work clothes, the kids' sports gear, a couple of towels. The water that drains out the back of the machine looks clean. It is not.
You did not do anything wrong here. Nobody tells you this happens, because you cannot see it.
See the ball that catches laundry microplastics before the ocean does — this week, 20% off with code LAUNDRYWIN20
Catch the fibres in your wash →Why it happens
Synthetic fabrics shed every single wash, whether you can see it or not
Activewear, fleece, uniforms — most of what is in a modern wardrobe is at least part synthetic. Every wash rubs tiny plastic fibres loose from the fabric. They are too small for the filters at the wastewater plant to catch, so they pass straight through into rivers and the ocean. On average, a 6kg load sheds somewhere around 700,000 of these fibres in a single wash (see the testing breakdown on the Cora Ball FAQ page, which draws on independent lab studies).
That is not a one-off. That is every wash, of every load, forever — unless something in the machine catches them first.
- Less plastic pollution leaving your house, without you doing anything different
- No change to detergent, wash temperature or routine
- Something that just sits in the drum and does its job quietly
Want to see what's actually collecting in your machine?
See the Cora Ball →The clever bit
The Cora Ball copies how coral catches food
Coral filters tiny food particles out of moving water using soft, branching arms. The Cora Ball uses the same idea. Its stalks sit in the drum, and as water and clothes move past them during the wash, loose microfibres catch on the stalks and collect in the centre instead of washing out the drain.
The proof
Two independent studies, not just a marketing claim
This is not a single company-funded test. One study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, found the Cora Ball captured 26% of microfibres in a wash. A second, from the University of Plymouth's International Marine Litter Research Unit and published in Science of the Total Environment, found 31%. Both studies found something else too: adding the ball to a wash reduced how much fibre the clothes shed in the first place — meaning less damage to the clothes as well as the water (Cora Ball FAQ, CaliWoods).
Ready when your next load is.
Add one to your next wash →Save this one
Check it every few months, not every load
Leave it in the drum for every wash with synthetic fabrics. Every few months, pull out the fluff that has collected in the centre — the same way you would clean a hairbrush, using your fingers or tweezers — and put it in the landfill bin. There is no kerbside recycling for this kind of microplastic fluff yet in New Zealand, so landfill is the honest answer for now.
It will not catch everything. Even the better of the two studies only found 31%, and it takes months of washing, sometimes longer, before you see any fluff build up at all, because you are working at a microscopic scale. Leave it out for delicates and anything strappy or knitted, since the stalks can snag them.
Less plastic down the drain, starting Tuesday night
This week only — 20% off · code LAUNDRYWIN20
Add one to your next washCapture rates are from independent published studies and vary with load, fabric and machine. The Cora Ball reduces, but does not eliminate, microfibre shedding.