John,

Our oceans are rapidly turning into a plastic soup – awash with 14 billion tons of tiny, toxic particles that will never break down. And every day, more microplastics flow out of our drains into once-pristine rivers and seas.

The maddening thing is there’s an easy way to stem this pollution – it’s just not being done. A full third of microplastics come from laundry, and can be stopped with a simple filter, but washing machine manufacturers have been reluctant to fit them to save costs.

Now France has made it mandatory for all new machines to have filters, and if other countries follow suit, the impact on our oceans would be massive. That’s why we have a team of campaigners ready to roll out a huge campaign on this – but for them to get to work, we need your help.

If everyone reading this chips in, we can launch an all out advocacy surge – going from government to government to push them to get on board, running media-grabbing actions and naming and shaming washing machine companies who’d rather destroy the oceans than lose a fraction of their profits.

We’ve done this before – pushing McDonald’s to stop using plastic straws and eventually getting them banned across Europe. We can do it again on microplastics – are you in?

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Washing machine filters may not sound exciting, but they are literally world-changing – these simple devices capture 90% of the plastic microfibers that shed from material like polyester and nylon as it spins, preventing these toxic threads reaching our waterways and poisoning sealife. 

But they’re not being introduced fast enough – and we know they won’t be without major pressure on governments and companies to act. That’s where we come in.

If we can raise enough, we’ll launch a huge campaign to push the European Commission to adopt the French law across the EU – using the same tactics that helped get plastic straws and cutlery banned. And once laundry machine manufacturers have to include the filter in their models to sell in Europe, we’ll pressure them to roll it out across the globe. 

At the same time, we’ll target the biggest washing machine manufacturer, Electrolux, taking out newspaper ads, funding reports, and staging attention grabbing stunts calling on them to act. And when we force them to include these filters in all models, it will create a domino effect across the whole industry.

This is a moment that the Ekō community was made for, but it’s a massive undertaking and we can’t do it alone – will you chip in to help save our oceans from microplastics? 

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