We all enjoy dressing ourselves and our families in clean clothing, yet we may not realize that a staggering 90% of the energy consumed by washing machines goes into heating the water. Only 10% or so goes to actually running the machine. If all the households in America were to begin washing their clothes in cold water we'd collectively save about 30 million tons of CO2 per year.
What's more, we save both energy and water if we take care to only run the washing machine when we have a full load of clothes.
So if your "whites" pile of laundry is smaller than your "darks" and "colored" piles, make it a point to wait to wash them until you have enough to fill your machine.
What You Should Know
- The average American home washing machine is used more than 400 times a year.
- Clothes washers and electric dryers can account for as much as 25% of the electricity you use at home (including the hot water for the wash).
- Washing machines use about 15%-20% of the water in homes that have them. Each wash cycle uses 32-59 gallons - as much as two showers. So if you're going to use that much water, don't waste it on a small load!
- Few fabrics need to washed in hot water anymore - grease stains or baby diapers being obvious exceptions - and while most regular detergent can handle cold water washes, you may want to try one of the new cold-water detergents on the market for best results. Try pre-treating oily stains with a stain stick. For really dirty clothes, selecting a warm presoak cycle followed by cold wash and rinse cycles is still more energy-efficient than using a hot wash cycle.
- Efficient ENERGY STAR washers consume 18-25 gallons per load compared to the 40 gallons used by a standard washer.
Easy Things You Can Do
- Experiment with cold water wash and rinse cycles. For nearly all clothes, the results will be as good as using a hot water wash and warm rinse, and you'll cut your energy use by half. Also, by washing in cold water, you can cut carbon dioxide emissions by up to 500 pounds a year.
- Always run your washing machines with full loads of laundry to maximize the machine's use of energy and water, and to save you time.
- Set the water level in the washing machine to suit the size of the load if you must run a small load of laundry - you'll save both water and energy.
- Try washing on a delicate setting instead of regular. The motor won't have to work as hard.
Sources: 30 Simple Energy Things You Can Do To Save The Earth (Earth Works and PG&E), and TerraPass. Acterra (David Coale)