Laundry Tips
by Bonnie Alter, London on 01.19.07
Never mind what your mother taught you--turn down the heat on your washing machine and your clothes will still get clean. Asda, Britain's biggest seller of cheap clothes, has recommended that its customers wash their clothes at a lower temperature to save energy. From now on, Asda will be labelling all of its clothes with tags that recommend washing at 30 degrees centigrade (86F), instead of 40. They say that such a hot wash is no longer necessary because of improvements in the quality of laundry detergents and washing machines. A Cambridge University representative concurred: " Almost 60% of the total energy to make and launder a garment is used by the customer once they get the item of clothing home". Lower washing machine temperatures mean lower fuel bills and lower emissions from power stations. And don't forget to hang the clothes to dry outside, saving even more energy. :: Independent
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Tsk. My mother taught me to wash darks in cold, lights in warm, always use cold water to rinse, and always hang things out if weather permits. Even if you're not an environmentalist (which my parents were, a little), heating water costs money.
Agreed. It is perfectly possible to wash clothes clean without hot water. Same goes for washing dishes. Washing your hands. And so on. And it is perfectly possible to dry clothes without electrical energy. Same goes with dishes and hair and so on. We use too much energy not because we need to but because we let ourselves be convinced that we need to.
It seems like we could also save about 13 times the energy by using more wool clothing that only starts smelling after 14 days instead of one or two. Thats 13 more days you can wear them without washing them... It can be just as soft as cotton for t-shirts too, & will keep us warmer.
This is a great idea...unless you think about things like eColi. Hot water kills them, cold water doesn't. Agreed, hanging outside would expose the clothes to Ultraviolet and kill eColi on the outside, but I don't like the idea of colonizing bacteria on my clothes...it takes a lot more energy to get me to hospital and care for an infection...Just a thought.
I would love to see comparisons tests re how effective just hanging one's unlaundered laundry out in the sun and wind, with a bit of shaking, vs conventional laundering...
ps I have found silk does not pick up body odours as readily as other materials...
things are bad in phoenix. i hesitate to hang my clothes out to dry because the not-so-fresh air leaves them smellier (and grittier) than they were before washing. of course, running the dryer only contributes to the pollution that make the air so smelly to begin with. i do wash my clothes in cold water--but i'm still using up precious desert water. and the one resource we have plenty of around here--the sun--is under-utilized to an extent that's almost laughable. almost.