A growing number of America’s 20 million healthcare workers will soon be able to wash their scrubs without polluting the environment with microplastics that will live forever.
Several brands now manufacture the professional gear with Ciclo, the additive to polyester and nylon yarn that allows the rogue polluting microplastic fiber to biodegrade like natural wool and cotton.
Two of the scrubs companies working with Ciclo are Kindthread’s Laundau brand, based in California, and New York-based Welles, two of whose founding principals came from the design studios of couturier Oscar de la Renta.
Welles was founded by two partners with a collective 30 years in high-end apparel, Rachel Rothenberg-Saenz and Alexandra Bayliss, who wanted to come up with a sustainable alternative to the typical polyester scrubs ensemble. They happened upon Ciclo in their research on an impromptu stop at Parkdale Mills, which owns the company as part of a joint venture. Then, in full pandemic mode, the pair answered an RFP by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo for companies giving a boost to the PPE industry in New York state. They were the first of 40,000 applicants to get funding.
Their resulting scrubs are completely bio-degradable in 1,300 days instead of the 200-350 years polyester lingers in a landfill, they are PFAS-free and don’t release toxic microfiber pollution into the environment, an attribute Rothenburg-Saenz considers particularly important.
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“There are now microplastics in breast milk, blood and food, and there are serious health conditions directly attributable to them,” she said.
In her view, taking more care with clothing provides a partial solution. “There is such a lack of information about clothing, the finishes and dyes and chemicals on the skin, especially when you think of food with the nutritional panel,” she said. “There are even medical professionals treating cancer while wearing [things containing] formaldehyde.”
It took a few tries to come up with the right hand, but since Ciclo accounts for less than 1 percent of the fiber, the added cost to the garment is negligible.
Welles has since moved into military apparel like a maternity flight suit for the Air Force, and is making headway into the spa world. Future target industries include culinary, hospitality and construction uniforms. It’s eyeing a closed-loop take-back program that could eventually repurpose materials for scrubs.
Biodegradable polyester and nylon may also eclipse market fervor for anti-microbial treatments which start out as something of a shield against bacteria but which can eventually become less effective through washing, especially in commercial laundries.
The medical workwear industry is valued at $10 billion in the U.S. and $79 billion globally, according to a 2021 study by Frost & Sullivan that was commissioned by Figs. These numbers are poised to grow with the increase in the number of minimally invasive surgical procedures conducted routinely, growth of ground-floor walk-in medical clinics and extended care facilities for the elderly, in addition to technological advancements in medical apparel textiles.
Ciclo is not yet being used in the kind of disposable non-woven PPE that was so ubiquitous during the pandemic. Something is in the works, but nothing has yet come to market, according to Andrea Ferris, co-founder and CEO of Intrinsic Textiles Group, originators of Ciclo and partners with Parkdale, the largest spun yarn facility in the Western Hemisphere. Ciclo was launched in 2017.
Also fueling industry growth is a trend that now has approximately 85 percent of medical professionals choosing their own workwear because they want something more stylish, especially after weathering the pandemic.
Sale of medical workwear made with Ciclo could benefit from conscious consumers who don’t want to damage the environment or contribute to textile pollution worldwide. Ciclo is an additive that is permanently embedded in the matrix of the polyester or nylon fiber during the melt extrusion phase. It creates countless pathways for the microbes that live in the environment to be attracted to the material as a nutrient source, breaking them down like any natural fiber. Ciclo leaves the fabric as durable and wrinkle-free as it was designed to be but makes fibers more flexible and therefore less likely to break off and become a pollutant.
It creates pathways for the microbes that live in the environment to be attracted to the material as a nutrient source and ultimately break it down.
“They are biodegradable in environments where you have moisture and access to microbes over long periods of time,” Ferris said. “These environments are actually environments where microfibers are prolific pollutants.”
Ciclo has undergone rigorous testing using ASTM and ISO criteria, and in multiple environments, including wastewater treatment plant sludge. According to Ferris, between 65 percent and 99 percent of microfibers that go through a treatment plant can get stuck in the sludge which later ends up as soil amendments or fertilizers, making it a great testing ground.
Ferris noted that Ciclo polyester degrades at a rate slightly better than that of wool.
A long-term study by a third-party lab using an ASTM Test Method found that Ciclo polyester biodegraded 87.6 percent and wool biodegraded 71.2 percent after 600 days, she said. “We also like to note that the time it takes any material to biodegrade in uncontrolled natural conditions will vary based on many factors.”
Ciclo has been given an Eco Passport by Oeko-Tex certification. It is completely non-toxic, including to marine life.
So far, Ciclo is used in 50 clothing brands worldwide, including Billabong, Finisterre, Jag Jeans, Definite Articles by the founder of Untuckit, Dovetail Workwear and Target. Further adoption would help put an end to the fugitive microfiber pollution that gets into the ocean and which grew exponentially between 2000 and 2020, when output in the textile industry surged from 58 million tons to 109 million tons worldwide.
Recognizing the severity of the microplastic problem, France has mandated that by 2025, all washing machines and dryers have filters that capture it, and the UK is making a similar move.