CLEANR Launches New Campus Sustainability Offering to Help Universities Fight Microplastic Pollution

April 3, 2025
3:46 pm

CLEANR launched a new offering that will enable U.S. universities to significantly reduce their microplastic emissions. Under the program, CLEANR will deploy its breakthrough microplastics filter to on-campus washing machines to prevent microplastics from going down the drain and entering the environment.

CLEANR first debuted its filters at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) as part of the institution’s sustainability efforts.

“By focusing on washing machines, U.S. universities can join in stopping up to a third of microplastics from entering our waterways,” said Max Pennington, Co-Founder & CEO of CLEANR. “Our filtering technology makes the job almost as simple and easy as removing lint from a dryer for university communities and makes a measurable impact on microplastic emissions.”

Washing machine wastewater is one of the world’s largest sources of microplastic pollution, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. CLEANR’s filter—based on its core VORTX technology—was recently certified by the prestigious Shaw Institute to remove over 90% of microplastics as small as 50 microns.

*CLEANR units at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) Courtesy: PRNewswire*

CLEANR’s new university offering debuts in dormitories at Case Western Reserve University, where the filter will be deployed to up to 120 on-campus washing machines. The devices will enable the university to remotely measure, analyze, and monitor the filters’ performance via sensors and the CLEANR Smart App.

“CLEANR is aligned with our institutional mission to solve the world’s leading problems,” said Case Western Reserve University President Eric W. Kaler. “Installing CLEANR filters on our residence hall washing machines provides us with an easy and practical way to significantly reduce our microplastic emissions while serving as a model for our peers to do the same.”

CLEANR estimates that for every 100 filters installed in university housing facilities, the equivalent of 5,600 credit cards worth of plastic a year can be prevented from entering the environment.

Microplastics—plastic particles smaller than 5 millimeters in diameter—are increasingly associated with major human health risks, including heart disease, digestive cancer, and reproductive disorders. Microplastics often degrade into nano-plastics, particles small enough to pass through the blood-brain barrier, that can slip through downstream water treatment filters.

*CLEANR for washing machines. Image courtesy: PRNewswire*

Protecting the Great Lakes Waterways

CLEANR’s filter implementation at CWRU was motivated in part by the rise in microplastic pollution in the Great Lakes. Lake Erie, situated three miles from the university campus, has the second-highest microplastic concentration levels of the five Great Lakes, according to the Journal of Great Lakes Research. In January, the International Joint Commission reported that microplastic levels in fish from the Lakes are “among the highest reported worldwide.”

“The Great Lakes hold one-fifth of the world’s fresh surface water, and 40 million people rely on them for their drinking water,” said Bryan Stubbs, President and Executive Director of the Cleveland Water Alliance. “That makes this region a key battleground in fighting microplastic pollution. And the more we learn about the health risks of microplastics, the more important that breakthrough inventions like CLEANR’s VORTX technology become to our community.”

CLEANR’s Nature-Inspired VORTX Technology

CLEANR was founded in 2022 by three CWRU engineering students who developed the company’s patent-pending VORTX filtration technology at the Sears think [box]. The core design of VORTX was inspired by manta rays and basking sharks, whose specialized gill structures allow them to glide through the water and feed passively without clogging their gills.

Instead of forcing particles against a filtering surface like conventional filters, the VORTX technology creates vortices that suspend and isolate microplastic particles and efficiently channel them away to be captured and properly disposed of in the CLEANR Pod. The filter was recently certified by the prestigious Shaw Institute to be more than 90% efficient at capturing microplastics as small as 50 microns.

Pennington said, “Implementing our technology for a top U.S. research and engineering university is an incredible honor on its own. But being entrusted to do so by our own alma mater is one of our most rewarding achievements since we started this venture.”

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