Sustainable Consumption Institute

Since the mid-80s improvements in the environmental performance of washing machines have reduced the energy intensity of any given wash. At the same time, there have been changes in how people actually use their washing machines and a trend towards washing at lower temperatures. Combining improved technologies with prominent campaigns that urged consumers to ‘turn to 30’ has brought about reductions in the energy used by washing machines in the UK, from 268 kilowatt hours for the average household in the mid-1980s to 166 kilowatt hours in 2012.

But the same period has seen a massive spike in the overall energy used in laundering clothes. Part of the problem is that more people are using washing machines more frequently than ever before. The average UK household now puts a wash through about five times per week, according to a report by the Energy Saving Trust.

Washing clothes, of course, is only part of the picture. When things come out of the washing machine we need to get them dry again and as it turns out, more and more of us are using tumble dryers rather than washing lines to do so. Current estimates suggest that up to 81% of washes are followed by a drying cycle and although there have been modest improvements in their environmental performance, tumble dryers remain enormously energy intensive.

Increases in the ownership and use of tumble dryers coupled with increased washing seem the main reasons why the energy use associated with doing the laundry has doubled (pdf) since 1970 in spite of reductions in that used by washing machines.

A joined up approach

This story shows the limits of focusing on technical efficiency and the problems in approaching sustainability by focusing on isolated behaviours, such as washing machine use, rather than on the full range of related activities that are likely to have environmental impacts.

A study by Professor Sarah Pink, an anthropologist now based at RMIT University in Melbourne, which explores the ways in which households go about doing their laundry, draws attention to a range of tasks involved, such as sorting, separating, wearing, washing, drying and ironing.

Our work at the Sustainable Consumption Institute, University of Manchester, including a recent survey of how 1,500 households handle their laundry in Great Britain today, suggests that a more joined up account of domestic laundry habits might provide useful insights for thinking about sustainability campaigns.

Our research shows it’s normal for laundry to be separated. Only 10% of the sample did not separate their washing, whereas 60% separated by two or more criteria including the type of laundry to be washed (eg bedding versus underwear), whites and colours, and how dirty things are. Speculatively, this makes it harder for households to wash full loads, leading to smaller loads getting washed more regularly. This is bad news from the perspective of energy and water consumption

The increasing frequency with which UK households use their washing machines suggest rises in the volume of ‘dirty laundry’ being produced. However, there is no evidence that we are ‘dirtying’ our laundry any quicker than we used to. When asked about the most important reason for putting different types of laundry in the wash, households in our study reported that consciously evaluating dirtiness matters far less than washing things at specific intervals or after set amounts of wear. Routines appear to guide laundry habits, and the norm is to wear things once or twice before putting them in the washing basket.

Items piling up in the laundry basket may not seem like an environmental problem, however a clear majority in our study (58%) suggest that a major trigger for doing the laundry is when the basket – or the pile on the floor – is big enough. Accepting that many of these items were not actually dirty to begin with, it’s perhaps not surprising that ideas about what clean laundry is appear to be changing. For example, 75% of respondents agreed with the statement that ‘clean laundry smells like the laundry products used in the wash’.

What can we learn?

The lessons for policy-makers and businesses hoping to build on the success of the ‘turn to 30’ campaigns are that a focus on washing machines and their use is not enough, in isolation, to address the environmental impacts of domestic laundry.

Many untapped points of intervention could be used to discourage the growing frequency of wash cycles needing to be dried. Larger washing baskets or wardrobes with a designated space for ‘used but not dirty’ items might prove effective. Or labelling suggesting how many wears you can get away with before washing.

High profile interventions like the CEO of Levi Strauss & Co announcing that he had not washed his jeans for a year could also help shift conventions around what gets washed when – such that people no longer put clothes in the wash after wearing them once only for them to come out the other end smelling of detergent. Thinking seriously about reducing the use of tumble dryers should involve promoting alternative arrangements for drying laundry. A useful point of intervention would be in the design of new housing with communal drying spaces that are commonplace in Sweden, for example.

Doing the laundry presents several sustainability challenges. Our research suggests we need to move beyond a focus on technological efficiency and isolated changes in behaviour to look more closely at the interconnected activities driving unsustainable household consumption.

This article was first published on Guardian Sustainable Business here.