> What’s so bad about it? We already do it” is a pretty pessimistic take

Not pessimistic at all. It's realistic. We have a finite amount of money and time to make plastic problems better. To make up numbers for an example, if the total amount of microplastics put in the air each year is 1 trillion bits, and if cutting sewer pipes adds 47 bits per year, then saying "What's so bad about it" is actually saying "We have far greater issues to spend our money and time on." and it protects you from wasting that time and money.

Where do you think the water goes once youre done washing your clothes in it? It doesnt dissapear. They are saying there are more likely much more dangerous polutant sources that should be considered before we stop repairing water line.

I'll admit I didn't read the study because its paywalled and the preview gives absolutely zero useful information.

If the goal is to reduce microplastics in the environment all of these researchers should immediately pivot to researching alternatives to plastic tires, and find a way to convince the world to move away from synthetic fibers.

In other words if they managed to stop this sewer practice they would reduce microplastics by .001% (or whatever the study claims it is)

It's a question of scale - there might be one sewer pipe repair per person per... decade, I'd guess? Actually probably way less, but let's stick with per decade.

Whereas there is one load of laundry per person per... I'm guessing per week-ish? And this probably pales in comparison to tires and brake pads.

So laundry is done something like 500x more often. Sure it's great to study everything, but it's also important to keep in mind what is significant and widespread, and what is relatively minor.

I agree, but I also think there are much bigger pollution sources with much easier solutions than this.