Why Are You Still Washing Your Clothes In Warm Water?
Back in the day — before washing machines or soap — people cleaned their laundry by boiling it in water. Besides killing lice, hot water helped get rid of sweat and greasy stains.
Now, we rely on mechanical action from our washers and chemical reactions from our detergents. Unless you have a good reason for using the warm or hot cycles (really stinky clothes or cloth diapers), warm water is no longer necessary.
Of the total energy use and greenhouse-gas emissions produced by a single load of laundry, approximately 75% of it comes from warming the water itself.
A recent estimate from Consumer Reports suggests that using a cold-water detergent and setting your machine to 60 °F (compared to 75 °F) can save you at least $60 per year in utilities.
As io9 explains:
Think of it this way: If every Las Vegas household switched to cold washing for an entire year, the amount of energy saved could power its famous Strip for nearly a week. If every household across the U.S. switched to cold water for an entire year, that would save the same amount of energy produced by the Hoover Dam in 20 months.
Whatever you decide to do with your laundry, just don’t be like this guy:
UC folks: Have you signed up for the coolcampuschallenge.org yet? Use the Cool Climate Calculator to understand your carbon footprint. There’s also a bunch of easy tips (like this one) that you can use to save energy.
