Fabric 101: Polyester
Polyester is the most widely used fiber used for garments because it is cheap, durable, and easy to care for. It is a synthetic fiber, meaning that it does not come from a natural source (such as the cotton plant or silkworms), and is instead entirely man made.
Despite our over-reliance on polyester within the garment-making industry, this fiber has come across a lot of scrutiny in recent years. Polyester is essentially a plastic fiber that is a product of the fossil fuel industry and is considered overall unsustainable and damaging to the environment.
In this article, we’ll explore what exactly polyester is and why it’s so ubiquitous in the fashion industry. We’ll also look at the sustainability challenges of the fiber.
What is polyester fabric?
Polyester is a synthetic fiber, primarily derived from petroleum. The creation of polyester involves a chemical reaction involving coal, petroleum, air, and water. This process, known as polymerization, essentially ‘bakes’ the ingredients together to form a new, durable material.
Your clothes, home textiles, and outdoor gear often contain polyester because it’s the most widely used fiber in the fashion industry. It’s favored for its remarkable ability to resist wrinkles and shrinkage, maintaining its shape over time. Also, it has quick-drying properties making it a popular choice for both everyday wear and performance attire.
Why is polyester fabric everywhere?
Polyester fabric is a staple in wardrobes and stores around the world. The ubiquity of polyester can be attributed to a few key reasons, but primarily its cheap cost and ease of care.
Polyester is one of the cheapest and easiest fibers to manufacture. It is much cheaper and quicker to produce than natural fibers., making it an easy choice for today’s fast fashion companies that strive to make everything as cheaply and quickly as possible.
Despite what you may hear online, polyester is also a durable fabric. It doesn’t shrink in the wash, wrinkle, or warp out of shape when it’s stretched too far. Polyester garments keep their shape well, even after many washes.
Because of this durability, polyester is impressively low maintenance. It’s machine washable and dries quickly, sparing you from expensive dry-cleaning bills. Moreover, polyester’s resistance to stains means that you can keep your clothes looking new with minimal effort.
Is polyester bad quality fabric?
You may have heard that polyester is synonymous with poor quality. I see it all over the internet. People just assume that a natural cotton garment is automatically higher quality than polyester. But that’s not an absolute truth.
Polyester fibers are quite durable. The issues with polyester quality often stem from its production. Within fast fashion, the goal to minimize costs as much as possible leads to corner-cutting during production. This means lower thread counts and thinner yarns used in production. Cheaper polyester fabrics are produced with less stringent standards, reducing their overall quality.
When you’re shopping, scrutinize the fabric quality regardless of the fiber. High-quality polyester exists and offers both durability and comfort, depending on the weave and finish. Sometimes a good quality polyester garment is the right option for you because you’ll be able to wear it for years to come, while you might ignore something that is 100% cotton because you don’t like ironing.
Remember, fabric content alone does not dictate quality. It’s crucial to look beyond the label and consider the fabric’s feel, look, and the reputation of the brand to determine the quality of a polyester garment.
Polyester in fabric blends
Polyester is often blended with other fibers (such as wool and cotton). This gives the finished fabric some desirable characteristics, such as being easily washed, and not wrinkling easily. It can also add to the overall durability of the fabric
This adaptability means that no matter what the occasion, you’re likely to find polyester in the fabric blend. For example, a cotton and polyester blend keeps the anti-wrinkle and durable properties of the polyester, while also maintaining the softness and breathability of the cotton fibers.
This hybridization of fabrics harnesses the strengths of each textile to enhance the final product. It means that polyester fabric blends are often more comfortable, easier to care for, and relatively cheap compared to the natural fiber fabrics.
However, this does come at a cost. Adding polyester to a natural fiber means that the resulting fabric is no longer biodegradable. It is also very difficult to recycle or reuse fibers once they are made into a fabric blend.
Properties of polyester
Like all fiber types, polyester has certain qualities that you will see across garments and fabrics that use the fiber. Characteristics of polyester include:
- It’s not breathable: The fabric is not breathable and can trap heat, which might be uncomfortable in tight-fitting clothes or in the summer months.
- Easy to care for: Polyester is machine washable on just about any setting. You can easily throw it in the washer and with all your other clothes and don’t have to worry about shrinkage, color bleeding, ripping, or warping out of shape.
- Melts with a too-hot iron: Because polyester is more-or-less a type of plastic, it will melt at high heat. Be sure to keep your iron on low setting.
- Does not wrinkle easily: polyester fibers are highly resistant to wrinkling. You can be a lot less careful with how polyester garments are stored and washed, and spend less time ironing out wrinkles.
- Can be used in just about any kind of material: You can use polyester to create a shiny satin dress, durable twill pants, a standard button up shirt, or just about any kind of garment.
- Can have a shiny or matte finish: This fabric can take on varied textures, from a shiny finish to a more matte appearance
- Not very moisture absorptive: polyester is not as absorbent as natural fibers, leading to potential discomfort in hot environments, but this quality does make it resistant to mildew.
- Durable fibers: Polyester fibers are known for their strength and longevity. They withstand a significant amount of wear and tear,
- Doesn’t stain easily: Since it doesn’t absorb moisture, it also doesn’t stain as easily as most natural fibers.
The problems with polyester and sustainability
Polyester is a plastic-based material, making it a non-renewable fabric that often challenges sustainability efforts. This prevalent fabric has a variety of disadvantages due to its composition and the manner in which it’s produced, which you should consider when evaluating its environmental impact.
- Microfiber Shedding: Microfibers are tiny strands of plastic that can shed from the fabric (usually when washing garments) and contaminate the water supply. It’s not quite understood what the long-term health effects of this will be, but most experts agree that this is a major problem with polyester clothing that needs to be addressed. Loosely woven materials, or brushed fabrics (like fleece) contribute significantly more to this problem than other types of fabric.
- Composting Issues. Blends that incorporate polyester are not compostable or biodegradable. This contributes significantly to the landfill problem.
- Production Process: Producing polyester is energy and chemical intensive. This process consumes significant natural resources and leads to higher carbon emissions.
- Potential for Pollution: If not managed correctly (and it’s often not), the chemicals used to manufacture polyester can pollute waterways.
I do consider recycled polyester material to be a semi-sustainable solution. Recycled polyester repurposes existing plastic, like PET bottles, into new fibers. This reduces the reliance on virgin resources and gives a way to create things like raincoats, umbrellas, water-wicking sportswear, and other garments that benefit from the properties of polyester without relying on new fossil fuel and plastic materials.
