No Washer Yet Has PlanetCare's EIC Accelerator Microfibre Filter

PlanetCare, a Ljubljana company led by its founder and chief executive Mojca Zupan, sells a filter that clips onto the drain hose of a washing machine and catches the plastic microfibres that synthetic clothes shed in the wash. In the European Commission's list of winners of the 19 May 2020 Green Deal cut-off of the EIC Accelerator pilot, the company appears as "Planet Care, rešitve za okolje, d.o.o.", with a grant only and the project Fibrestop: the "first built-in microfiber filter for washing machines". It is the only beneficiary listed for that project. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €1,587,250 towards a total cost of €2,267,500, from 1 November 2020 to 30 April 2023, to "obtain CE Mark and start commercialization in Europe".

The project's final report says it ended with a functional prototype adapted for production, two patent applications, a formal agreement with a first-tier component supplier and an agreement with "a major washing machine producer" to integrate the filter, with the goal of new machines on sale in time for the first European filter rules in 2025. Three and a half years after the project ended, no washing machine with the filter has been announced by PlanetCare or by any manufacturer, and the French rule that was meant to create the market has not taken effect.

A Small Filter Seller, Still Trading

The Slovenian company is active, has no blocked accounts and no insolvency proceedings, and has filed accounts for 2025, according to the AJPES data shown by CompanyWall. Bizi confirms the registration number, the 4 March 2011 registration date, the Stegne 21 address and that it is classed as a non-financial company under foreign control. That control runs through Planet Care Limited, a London company incorporated on 20 November 2017, whose only director is Mojca Zupan and which lists her as holding 75% or more of the shares, according to Companies House. The UK holding's 2024 accounts show net liabilities of £11,902 and an investment in a subsidiary of £9,718.

The founding date is reported two ways. The register dates the Slovenian company to 2011; the company's own story page says it has been developing filters "since 2017", and Green Queen says PlanetCare "was founded in 2017". What the company did before 2017 could not be verified.

The company still publishes. Its blog has posts from October and November 2025 and April 2026, and its web shop sells the PlanetCare 2.0 filter for €96 in the Slovenian store, cartridge refills by subscription and free cartridge returns. It claims "over 10,000 users worldwide"; in November 2023 TriplePundit reported 7,000 users for the first add-on filter. No independent sales figure is public.

The Technology: Catching Fibres at the Drain

Every wash of synthetic clothing sheds microfibres, which pass through the machine's drain into wastewater. Standard washing machines have no filter for them, the CORDIS summary notes. PlanetCare's approach is physical capture with no chemicals, and full cartridges go back to the company for recycling, according to CORDIS. The add-on version sits next to the machine on the drain hose, and the shop offers free cartridge returns. Fibrestop was the same idea moved inside the machine: a durable housing, a replaceable cartridge and an internal filter, which the final report describes as "automatically self-cleaning" and says "puts no burden on the user".

PlanetCare was not alone in that EIC round. The same May 2020 winners list includes the Swedish company Mimbly, funded for MIMBOX, a "plug-and-play" add-on device that captures microplastics from any washing machine. Appliance makers also have their own filters: Green Queen names Arçelik, Gulp and Filtrol among companies making washing machine microfibre filters.

How well the filters work

The capture rate is mostly the company's own number. Its Fibrestop page gives a "proven efficiency of 90%" for filter version 1.0 and a target above 95%; the current shop claims 98% for PlanetCare 2.0, tested by labs it does not name. The one independent comparison found is a study by Sheikhi, Bianco, Tiraferri and Sethi of the Polytechnic University of Turin in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, which tested three commercial filters over ten washes of polyester fleece and found capture rates of 35% to 68%, "depending on the filter type". The abstract does not name the filters. PlanetCare's blog says the 68% result was its filter, the other two being from AEG and Lint LUV-R, and explains the gap to its own figure by the study's 1.6 µm cut-off against a 50 µm industry standard.

What Fibrestop Promised, and What the Record Shows

The CORDIS objective promised to optimise the built-in filter and complete "all the validation activities necessary to obtain CE Mark and start commercialization in Europe". The company's project page added technical goals (design optimisation, functional testing, production of filters for pilot testing) and strategic goals (in-field testing with a washing machine manufacturer, regulatory documentation), and promised that "the end of the project will be immediately followed by commercialization of new machines".

According to the final periodic report, covering November 2021 to April 2023, PlanetCare built a testing laboratory and an automated rig for round-the-clock durability tests, developed a "two-step automated filtering system", had the filter externally tested and "validated in detail by an industrial partner", and ended with "a functional prototype adapted for production". The report says the design is the subject of two patent applications; their publication could not be verified. The project ran on time, from 1 November 2020 to 30 April 2023, a 30-month term against the "two-year project" the company described.

The commercial half is where the record goes quiet. The company named its supplier partner on its project page: Copreci, described as a "global first-tier supplier of drain pumps", with which it signed an agreement to commercialise the filter and possibly develop "an integrated pump-filter assembly". No announcement from Copreci about the deal was found, and the washing machine producer in the final report is not named anywhere public. In its own October 2025 policy post, PlanetCare mentions neither the built-in filter nor any manufacturer.

1. Optimised built-in filter designDeliveredProduction-ready prototype, per the final report.
2. Testing and external validationDeliveredIn-house rig, external tests and validation by an unnamed industrial partner.
3. Industrial partnersPartlyCopreci agreement stated by PlanetCare; the washing machine producer is unnamed.
4. CE markNot achievedNo certification announced.
5. Machines with the filter on sale by 2025Not achievedNo machine announced by PlanetCare or any manufacturer.

The Law That Was Meant to Open the Market

Fibrestop was timed for France. Article 79 of the AGEC anti-waste law of 10 February 2020 requires new domestic and professional washing machines sold from 1 January 2025 to have a microplastic fibre filter "or any other internal or external solution", but makes this depend on an implementing decree, according to a written question by the deputy Philippe Bolo published on 31 March 2026, which states that the decree had still not been published. The question received no answer before it was closed on 5 May 2026. In April 2025, L'Info Durable reported that the decree was missing, that the environment ministry declined to give AFP any new information, and that APPLiA, the European appliance makers' association, called the technologies "restrictive for the consumer".

PlanetCare itself acknowledged in October 2025 that the provision "has yet to be implemented" and "remains unenforceable", in its blog. Its shop page still tells buyers that from January 2025 all new washing machines in France must include a filter.

The Money Since the Grant

PlanetCare has announced no equity round. It is not in the EIC Fund portfolio: none of the 319 companies on the 16 pages of the official list on 16 October 2026 is PlanetCare, and its EIC award was a grant only. The visible outside money is crowdfunding: the PlanetCare 2.0 campaign on Kickstarter raised €150,887 from 1,399 backers against a €15,000 goal, from 20 September to 30 October 2023, the same weeks Green Queen reported the launch of version 2.0.

The Slovenian accounts for 2023 to 2025, as published by CompanyWall from the AJPES database, show total revenue falling from €604,053 to €421,821 and then €396,496. The company made a profit of €5,042 in 2023, a loss of €299,860 in 2024, which turned its equity negative at minus €275,115, and a profit of €115 in 2025. Equity stood at €225,000 at the end of 2025. Long-term liabilities were €1.5 million in 2023, €2.0 million in 2024 and €1.5 million in 2025, on total assets of about €1.87 million; who the creditor is, and how equity rose by about €500,000 in 2025 with almost no profit, is not shown in the free register data. Earlier years could not be checked without paid access.

Why It Matters for Europe

The EU's Zero Pollution Action Plan commits to cutting microplastic releases into the environment by 30% by 2030, and the Commission names synthetic textile fibres among the main unintentional sources, according to its microplastics page. The EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles, adopted on 30 March 2022, lists addressing "the unintentional release of microplastics from synthetic textiles" as an action. PlanetCare writes that an International Electrotechnical Commission group is working on standards for measuring fibre shedding and filter efficiency and that the ecodesign rules for washing machines are under review, both expected to conclude by the end of 2026, in its October 2025 post. Whether either will require filters is not decided.

For a built-in filter, the rule is the market. PlanetCare's own history shows it: makers turned down its integrated filter in 2017, when, TriplePundit reports, Zupan was told she "would be better off adopting a dolphin", and the industry association APPLiA still argued against the French requirement in 2025. Until standards settle how capture is measured, the gap between the 90% to 98% in marketing and the 35% to 68% in the Turin test will remain a point of dispute.

The Verdict

This article is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout. PlanetCare and the EIC were not asked for comment.