Washers, dryers and dry cleaning make doing laundry easy, but they can be tough on the environment. With a few simple changes, you can reduce your environmental impact and trim your utility bills.
If laundry day doesn’t seem like a big deal, consider this: On average, an American household washes almost 400 loads of laundry a year, according to Energy Star.
Your laundry days add up, so it’s worth thinking about how you can minimize your household’s impact. Simply running washers and dryers uses up a tremendous amount of electricity and water. Tally up all the loads you do in a week (or a month, or a year): All that laundry adds up to a major energy drain!
- Up to 90% of the energy used for clothes washing is used to heat the water.
- Nearly 22% of indoor home water use comes from doing laundry
- 99 pounds of carbon dioxide emmissions are saved per household each year by running only full loads of laundry
- Do laundry less often
- Wash in cold water
- Choose greener machines
- Line dry or use a clothes rack
- Remove stains with bar soap
- Make your own dryer balls and sheets
- make your own green detergents
