When you throw your favorite T-shirt into the wash, you’re not just cleaning it — you’re slowly destroying it. Every cycle strips away dye, loosens fibers, and flushes microscopic debris into the water supply. Now, a new study from the University of Leeds, partly funded by Procter & Gamble (yes, the detergent megacorporation), shows there’s a surprisingly easy way to fight back: just wash your clothes faster and colder.

Researchers ran the numbers and the fabric swatches, and the results were striking. A 30-minute cycle at 25°C kept colors brighter, cut dye transfer by up to 74%, and slashed microfibre pollution by more than half compared with the standard 85-minute, 40°C wash.

Clothes That Live Longer, Oceans That Stay Cleaner

Dr. Lucy Cotton, lead author of the study, put it bluntly, “Using shorter, cooler washes is a simple way everyone can make their clothes last longer and keep them out of landfill.”

Her team tested real retail T-shirts made of cotton, polyester, or blends in combinations meant to mimic typical loads of darks and brights. They even tossed in white “receiver” fabrics to track how much color bled across loads.

The verdict was clear: hotter, longer washes punished fabrics, making them fade faster and shed more.

And the shedding doesn’t stop. The study confirmed what earlier research hinted at: clothes keep releasing fibers every wash, even after 16 cycles.

“What is also evidenced is that on the eighth and [16th] wash that significant numbers of microfibres are still being released,” the authors wrote. That means a beloved sports hoodie will keep shedding invisible microplastics into waterways for its entire lifespan.

Even clothes not made of polyester can cause pollution. Cotton and other natural fibers shed too, and once they’re dyed, they can choke marine ecosystems. One analysis of seafloor sediment in Europe found nearly 80% of microfibres were cellulosic, not plastic. Whether synthetic or natural, those threads end up inside fish, shellfish, and eventually us.

The Strange Bedfellows of Science and Soap

The research appears in Dyes and Pigments, a peer-reviewed journal. It is careful, detailed work, complete with dye-kinetic modeling and Raman spectroscopy. But it’s also part of a long game for P&G, which has been pushing cold-water detergents since 2005. As study co-author Neil Lant, a Procter & Gamble research fellow, noted: “Advances in detergent technology, especially in sustainable ingredients such as enzymes, are allowing consumers to get excellent cleaning results in colder and quicker washes.”

Yes, the company that sells you pods also paid for the science proving their pods work better cold. And while that smells like clever marketing, the science checks out. Cotton’s project was her Ph.D. research, supported by a UK industrial fellowship, and the data is robust.

For once, corporate spin and ecological wisdom are in sync. Washing at 20°C instead of 40°C saves about two-thirds of the energy per load, according to the Energy Saving Trust. That means lower bills, less carbon, and fewer fibers in the sea. As Lant put it: “It’s a real win win win.”

Fast fashion has taught us to think of clothing as disposable. But this study makes a different point: how you wash your clothes shapes their lifespan, and the planet’s.

If the choice is between a bright T-shirt that lasts longer and an ocean sprinkled with dye-drenched fibers, the cold, quick cycle is the rare choice of clean living that’s actually easy.

The findings appeared in the journal Dyes and Pigments.