How does my clothes dryer’s lint catcher get so full, yet my clothes don’t fall apart? Where does all this lint come from?
In: Chemistry
It’s little fibers breaking off of the threads your clothes are made up of. Slowly, over time with many dryer cycles, the clothes will give up most of the fibers they had, and this is when you start developing “ratty” clothing with holes in it, even though you never put enough stress on the clothes to rip them.
The lint, while still in the clothing is significantly more compact than how you’re seeing it in your lint catcher.
So your lint catcher while looking like a lot of fibres is actually mostly just air in between all the lint. If you compacted it down to how it is in your clothing, it would be a very small amount.
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As another aside… a lot of lint gets flushed out in the wash (but is not a fire/“dust” hazard like your dryer lint) and is so small it doesn’t get filtered out.
Significant quantities eventually end up in our waterways and synthetic fabrics (nylon, rayon, polyester…) are one source of the plastic microfibers being found in the ocean. (It ain’t the bags and straws.)
As you wash items, they lose particles (lint) which is collected in your lint trap. If you weigh the lint you’ll see that it is a small percentage of the (dry) washed items.
As an interesting aside – laundry and linen companies (e.g., Aramark) often have a weight cut off for when they inject new linen. For example, if Aramark provides uniforms and the dry uniform loses 25% of its weight or more, it is retired from circulation.
Edit: Injection is a term used in laundry & linen to mean a new item is put in (“injected”) to circulation. When an item is retired – which can be due to weight, but could be caused by any other number of issues like rips, tares, stains – they are no longer in circulation, which means they won’t be cleaned and supplies back to the client. Syringes and other injection devices are not involved in laundry injection.
Your clothes are fibrous. They are made from small “ropes” that have a bunch of strings spun (or wrapped) together. Those are made from individual stands of whatever material (cotton usually). It’s the individual pieces (strands) that get snagged from wear & pulled when washing/ drying. These pieces are so small in the grand make-up, that when pulled they don’t unravel the larger “ropes”.
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A lot of it’s hair too. if you have pets, there will be a ton of hair in the lint. If you have long hair, same thing.
Are you also considering all the dead skin cells that slough off into your clothes?
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