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Airing Our Dirty Laundry

According to Project Laundry List, about 35 billion loads of laundry are washed each year in the U.S. The average household washes about 50 pounds of laundry in 7.4 weekly loads, cleaning some 6,000 items annually. About half of all loads are done in warm water, 35% in cold, and 15% in hot. Some 90% of those loads are dried in a gas or electric dryer.  (TEACHERS: Click here to get a lesson plan for Earth Day.)  That much laundry makes a big environmental impact. So what can we do to keep both our clothes and the environment clean? Try these ideas on for size:

  • Use the cold water wash option whenever possible, and you’ll save 85% of the money and energy consumed by a hot water load.
  • Wash full loads to get the most out of the water, energy, and detergent you are using.
  • Air dry your clothes on a line in your yard or on a rack set up in the bathtub or basement. Air drying saves energy and is free! Most electric dryers cost over $75 a year to operate, and gas dryers are only a little less expensive.
  • Look for the Energy Star label when shopping for a new washing machine or clothes dryer. This Department of Energy designation is given to machines that use less power and/or water.
  • Consider a front-loading washer. Front loaders are gentler on clothes and use up to 36% less water and 60% less energy than top loaders.
  • Use laundry detergents made from natural, biodegradable ingredients.Conventional detergents contain polluting surfactants like alkylphenol ethoxylates, or APEs. Natural laundry products use safe, biodegradable ingredients such as vegetable oils.
  • Check labels and avoid gimmicks like optical brighteners. Brighteners coat clothes with an unhealthy chemical that reflects light to trick the eye and make whites appear whiter.
  • Never use chlorine bleach. It’s harsh on clothing, and can combine with organic matter in wash water to form toxic by-products. Instead, use a hydrogen peroxide-based bleach. These are far gentler on fabrics and much better for the environment.
  • Do fewer loads when using your dryer.  Use towels and wear sweaters more than once before washing.

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    The Guide to a Toxin-Free Home

    Few products typify American consumerism as well as household cleaners.  Capitalizing on our insecurities, manufacturers and marketers have transformed a mundane collection of products into over an $18 billion market of household helpers. We’re constantly told we’ll humiliate ourselves if our toilet bowls and counter tops don’t sparkle as well as our neighbors’ do.  Marketing hyperbole aside, modern cleaners are significantly more effective than their predecessors.  Synthetic cleaning agents, anti-redeposition agents, bleaches, builders, enzymes and optical brighteners have produced a generation of products that work under more varied conditions, against more forms of dirt, in colder water, and with less time and effort than ever before. But in our attempts to get our clothes whiter than white and homes cleaner than clean, we’ve accepted a plethora of chemicals whose presence in our homes raises very serious health and environmental concerns.

    Plastics And Fuel Efficiency
    Petroleum is used to make plastics.  In fact, 16% of the 20,730,000 barrels of oil used by the U.S. each day goes to making plastic and other materials(source Wikipedia.)  That fact alone is scary as we store so much of our food and drinks in plastic.  Plastics can leach many extremely harmful toxins such as BPA (bisphenol A) which is getting a lot of press at the moment, particularly in relation to babies bottles and tinned formula.

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    These recycling facts have been compiled from various sources including, but not limited to, the National Recycling Coalition, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Earth911.org.