Over the past few years, evidence has been mounting that synthetic textiles such as polyester and acrylic, which make up much of our clothing, are a major source of pollution in the world’s oceans. That’s because washing those clothes causes tiny plastic fibers to shed and travel through wastewater treatment plants into public waterways. These microfibers are sometimes inadvertently gobbled up by aquatic organisms, including the fish that end up on our plate.

The apparel industry is largely responsible for stopping microfiber pollution, yet it has been slow to respond, according to a report released Tuesday by Mermaids, a three-year, €1.2m project by a consortium of European textile experts and researchers. The report recommended changes in manufacturing synthetic textiles, including using coatings designed to reduce fiber loss.

Maria Westerbos, director of the Plastic Soup Foundation, an Amsterdam-based nonprofit and Mermaids’ public outreach partner, urges the apparel makers and sellers to apply the report’s recommendations.

“So far we have hardly seen any effort from the clothing industry to tackle the problem at the source,” she said.

The Mermaids report is the latest research effort to quantify the environmental and health impact of microfiber pollution and offer potential solutions. Researchers studying plastic pollution started discovering microfibers in the early 2000s but it was not until a 2011 study, by ecologist Anthony Browne, that microfibers were linked to the apparel industry. He sought research funding from the apparel industry but received little support.

In recent years, additional studies revealed the enormity of the problem. It is estimated that a single fleece jacket can release a million fibers in a single washing. Numbers like that stunned the public, but only a few brands have launched or completed studies to determine how many fibers their products shed, or whether fibers found in the environment can be traced back to their products. None have announced design-based solutions that would result in products that shed fewer synthetic fibers, something that The Story of Stuff, an environmental group, called for in a short film earlier this year.