A comprehensive guide to green laundry

Here are some tips to get your laundry clean, save money and help the planet:

1) Wash in cold water. One of the biggest costs of washing your clothes is heating the water. Using heated water to wash a load of laundry can cost 10-15 times as much as using cold water, depending on the type of water heater you have in your home, the model and temperature settings of your washing machine, and the rate you pay for electricity. If you use your washer on a daily basis, you could save well over $100 a year by washing and rinsing in cold versus washing in hot and rinsing in cold. We wash all of our clothes in cold water, and our clothes get clean.

If, however, you try this and are unhappy with the results, washing in warm instead of hot and/or lowering the thermostat on your water heater will also help. If you are having trouble getting your detergent to dissolve adequately in cold water, try running some warm water in the machine for a minute, then adding your clothes and switching to cold (obviously, you can’t this if you have a front loading model).

2) Wash full loads. Try to only wash full loads of clothes. Washing one large load will typically use less energy than washing two medium loads.

3) Utilize the efficiency features built into your washing machine. If you need to wash a smaller load, be sure to use the “small load” setting on your machine if it has one. Also, if your washer has a “suds-saving” feature, you can use it to reuse water from the previous load, assuming you are planning to do another load right away.

4) Use environmentally friendly detergents and bleach additives. Many of the chemicals that have traditionally been used laundry soaps and bleaches are very bad for people and the environment. Most detergents are now phosphate free, but check yours to make sure. Phosphates fertilize waterways and cause accelerated algae growth, which wreaks havoc on ecosystems. Another good ingredient to avoid is a surfactant called nonylphenol ethoxylate (or NPE). NPE is an endocrine disrupter and estrogen mimic that is difficult to remove from wastewater. It can harm fish and other wildlife. Chlorine bleach is a lung irritant, and its manufacture and disposal can cause a host of environmental ills. There are plenty of green laundry detergents and non-chlorine bleaches on the market today. If you do some Googling, you can also find ways to make your own environmentally friendly detergents from scratch.

5) When replacing your washer, buy an Energy Star model. A new, highly efficient washer will pay for itself over time. If you have high electricity rates and wash a lot of clothes, the payback period could be just a few years. The best new washers use 30-60 percent less water and 50-70 percent less energy! Some of the newer washers also have more convenience features. Make sure you look at Consumer Reports or some other similar publication to check out the predicted reliability of the model you are considering purchasing. A few of the earlier high-efficiency front loading washers had some serious maintenance issues. I think these issues have been resolved now, but it always pays to do some careful research before you buy.

6) Hang up your clothes to dry whenever possible. There is a great discussion of this topic in another thread in this forum. The clothes dryer is one of the bigger energy hogs in your home. It is typically the second or third largest user of electricity or gas among all your household appliances. It is my understanding that all dryers use about the same amount of energy, so dryers are not Energy Star rated. Depending on electricity rates and amount of use, you could easily spend $50 to $100 annually to operate your dryer. You can purchase a clothesline (for outdoor use) or drying racks (for indoor use) for much less than it would cost to dry your clothes in a machine over one year. In Europe, it is common to dry clothes in this manner. We have several friends in Germany, and none of them own a dryer.

We hang up nearly all of our laundry on two large drying racks. We do use our dryer for large sheets and blankets, as we have no practical way to hang them up. It usually takes our clothes 24-48 hours to dry, depending on the temperature and humidity level of the house. The small amount of extra humidity that the damp clothes put into the air does not cause us any problem in the summer. In the winter, it actually makes the house a little more comfortable since we have a forced air gas furnace that tends to dry out the air.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that there are some drawbacks (personal, not environmental) to hanging up your clothes to dry. First, it takes a little more time to hang up the clothes than to throw them in the dryer (maybe 10 minutes per load), and they take much longer to line dry. If you don’t wait to the last minute to do your laundry, this is less of an issue. Second, your clothes and towels will not be as soft and fluffy when they dry as they would be if you had used a dryer, and they may have a few more wrinkles. Some things you can do to decrease the stiffness and wrinkles are (1) use less detergent, (2) snap out the wrinkles when you hang your clothes up, (3) hang your clothes with the heavy parts (e.g., tops of jeans) facing downward, and (4) if hanging outside, hang them in a windy, shady spot. A third drawback to hanging up your clothes is that there may be a little lint on very dark colored clothing that would otherwise be removed by the dryer. You can use a reusable (not disposable, please) lint brush to remove the lint if it is a problem. You can also iron clothes that need to look especially crisp, and no one will ever be able to tell that they were hung up to dry.

On the plus side, not only will you be saving money and energy by hanging up your clothes, but your clothes will last longer. The high temperatures of dryers damages the fibers of your clothes, making them wear out faster. If you have an inefficient dryer, it can continue drying clothes after they are already dry, damaging them even more. Also, if you hang your clothes outside, they will smell fresher than when they come out of the dryer.

If you don’t want to buy a clothesline or drying racks before you know if they will work for your lifestyle, you can experiment by doing a small load of laundry and hanging it up on hangers on the shower curtain rod over your bathtub (if you have one). If you try hanging up your laundry and decide it’s just too much of a hassle, proceed to the next section on using your dryer efficiently.

7) Use your dryer efficiently. For those times when you decide to use your dryer, there are several things you can do to use as little energy as possible:

-- Run the dryer with full loads only, but don’t overfill – air needs to be able to circulate around your clothes.

-- Separate heavy and light clothes, and dry them separately. Clothes made from synthetic fabrics like polyester, rayon, nylon, etc. take less time to dry than cotton towels, jeans, etc.

-- Don’t over dry clothes. If your dryer has an “auto dry” setting that shuts off automatically when it no longer detects moisture in the clothes, be sure to use it. If your dryer doesn’t have this feature, set the machine’s timer for a shorter period of time, then add more time later if necessary.

-- Don’t add wet clothes to a load that’s already partially dry.

-- Dry two or more loads of laundry in a row to utilize the existing heat in the dryer.

-- Clean the dryer filter after every use.

-- Clean the outside of the dryer exhaust vent (where the hot air from the dryer exits your home). Also, make sure that the flapper on the vent opens and closes properly and has a good seal.

-- Consider having the entire length of the dryer vent cleaned if you have an older home or have lived in your home for a long time and never had this done. The entire vent that removes the hot, moist air from your dryer from your home (the whole thing – not just the small section going from your dryer to the wall) can accumulate lint over a long period of time. This reduces the efficiency of your dryer and can also pose a serious safety hazard. There are some kits you can buy that allow you to hook up a power drill to a snake-like brush to clean the vent yourself, but the easiest and probably best way to clean the vent is to pay an appliance professional to do it for you.

8 ) Other options. For those with a little more time and/or money, there are some other non-traditional options for getting your clothes clean. You can actually still buy an old fashioned “James Washer” online and do your laundry without any electricity (it’s an expensive machine, however). There are some cheaper, smaller non-electric washers, but I’ve read mixed opinions about how well they work.

There are also some new electric drying machines that use different technology than standard dryers. Something called a “heat pump condensing dryer” works by sending warm air through the clothes to dry them. It is ventless and reuses the exiting heat, making it twice as efficient as existing dryers. There is also something called a Spin-X that spins your wet clothes at an extremely high velocity to remove much more water than a regular washer does during its spin cycle. Clothes taken from the Spin-X will dry faster in the dryer or when hung up.

Then there’s the way my grandma used to wash clothes – by hand in the sink. If you are single and don’t have many clothes to wash, this might be a realistic option for you.

Feel free to post any additional green laundry tips or to let me know if I’ve said anything that seems inaccurate. If you’ve tried any of the new (or old) washing or drying technology, let us know how it’s worked for you. (FYI – I have no relationship with any companies that sell washers or dryers, I have never used a James Machine, Spin-X or heat pump condensing dryer myself, and I am not recommending or warranting any specific product.)

Happy clothes washing!

For reference material and more detailed information on this topic, see:

http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid120.php (general info.)
http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/laundry.html (general info.)

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/12-energy-saving-laundry-tips.html (general info.)

http://www.grist.org/advice/ask/2005/06/08/umbra-clothesline/ (clotheslines)

http://www.grist.org/advice/ask/2007/09/24/ (detergents)

http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=clotheswash.display_comme... (Energy Star washers)

http://www.spin-x.com/ (Spin-X)

http://www.gaiam.com/retail/product/63411 (James Washer)