An Australian backyard science experiment confirms synthetic clothing fibres do not breakdown in soil whereas within a year most natural fibres are returning to organic matter.
On 26 January, 2018, Textile Beat buried synthetic and natural fibre material swatches glued to cardboard by digging a shallow hole in relatively poor soil near a mango tree in a suburban garden in Brisbane. These were covered them with dirt and leaf litter, and occasionally watered (twice a month) until January 2019 when they were retrieved.
Range of synthetic and natural fibre swatches as buried in a Brisbane garden January 2018.
The material swatches were mostly remnants from Jane Milburn’s studio or from discarded clothing.
We were curious to confirm that synthetics are plastic-like and remain forever, while natural fibres return to nutrients and organic matter when broken down by microbes and insects in the soil.
We dug them up on January 15, 2019, and this is what we found.
Swatches of synthetic clothing materials before, left, and after being buried for one year in 2018.