What is a lint interceptor?

Lint interceptors are often required by municipalities for commercial laundry facilities and laundromats. They are intended to remove lint and other debris from wastewater that gets dumped into city wastewater systems. These municipal systems are not equipped to filter out the lint and debris that commercial laundry equipment flushes out, and so a lint interceptor is installed as an additional line of defense for our water treatment systems and our ecosystem.

Depending on the way that plumbing is structured in the building, the lint interceptor can be installed either directly onto the floor or underneath. Regardless of how it is installed, its the effectiveness of filtration that truly determines whether the solution is adequately protecting our ecosystem from harmful pollutants and plastics.

Do Lint Interceptors Stop Plastic Pollution?

The Uniform Plumbing Code (UPC) requires lint interceptors for any commercial laundry machine. These devices are required, by the UPC code, to filter materials down to .5” (half-inch) in size. This standard basically removes large items such as strings and buttons from the wastewater before it enters treatment, but it does little to nothing at all to slow the influx of microplastics into the ecosystem.

For the best available lint interceptor on the market, check out H-M Company, a commercial laundry equipment company out of Cincinnati, Ohio. They make the best standard lint interceptors available on the market. They manufacture custom-fabricated lint traps that can be specifically engineered to a company’s — or a municipality’s — filtration standards. Learn more here. 

Wondering what you can do to stop plastic before it hits our ecosystem? We can help!