The story starts with a single thread of polyester, dislodged from the weave of a cheap, pink acrylic jumper as it spins around a washing machine. This load of washing will shed hundreds of thousands of tiny plastic fragments and threads – up to 700,000 in this one washing machine cycle.

Along with billions of other microscopic, synthetic fibres, our thread travels through household wastewater pipes. Often, it ends up as sewage sludge, being spread on a farmer’s field to help crops grow. Sludge is used as organic fertiliser across the US and Europe, inadvertently turning the soil into a huge global reservoir of microplastics. One wastewater treatment plant in Wales found 1% of the weight of sewage sludge was plastic.

From here, it works its way up the food chain through insects, birds, mammals and even humans. Perhaps our jumper’s life as a garment will end soon, lasting only a few outings before it emerges from the wash shrunken and bobbling, to be discarded. But our thread’s life will be long. It might have only been part of a jumper for a few weeks, but it could voyage around the natural world for centuries.