Deep Dive: The dirty truth about laundry

Interviewees:
Morgan Gary, owner of Spin Laundry Lounge in Portland, Oregon, US
Sonali Diddi, associate professor at the department of design and merchandising at Colorado State University, US
Markus Egert, professor for microbiology and hygiene at Furtwangen University, Germany
Erik Klint, PhD student at the Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
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Transcript:
Morgan Gary: And then I remember one day they came up and they were like: so I just want to let you know that we’re dating, and we met here folding our laundry.
And you know, that was just really sweet to hear that just, you know, happenstance that they were both just folding their laundry on a Tuesday.
…And they’re still together to this day.
Neil: Morgan Gary is the owner of “Spin Laundry Lounge” in Portland, Oregon, in the US. In the 10 years since she first opened her laundromat, she’s gotten to know some of her customers pretty well. There are regulars, and locals who come in with their pets – and even people who have their own washing machines at home.
Morgan Gary: So it definitely brings together a lot of people… It’s one of those places where you feel good about going by yourself and doing your laundry and then meeting people…
It’s a little different than, you know, going to a bar or any other social kind of setting.
You just never know who’s coming in and what they’re doing.
Neil: Or indeed… what they’re washing…
Morgan Gary: We’ve washed parachutes that are like 60 feet long. I’m not sure how, yeah, they fit in the machine.
We’ve had like the Cirque du Soleil cast come through and wash all of their costumes and just kind of fun things like that where the laundromat is covered in glitter and feathers and you know, you name it. (laughs) But yeah, we just, we get a lot of random things.
Neil: It’s bright inside. There are plants in colorful pots. And light reflecting off a row of big shiny machines. People come here to wash their clothes – and all kinds of other things. But for Morgan this is also a place where the community can gather. That was part of her vision from the beginning.
Morgan Gary: We tried to make it not feel like a laundromat. It’s in an old metal fabrication shop, so it’s got 30 foot ceilings and big windows and just kind of open space. And we wanted you to feel like you were more so like in a restaurant or like shopping, Like just not, not just doing laundry. You know, we wanted you to feel, just excited to be there.
Neil: The plan came out of her experience as a college student, when she didn’t have access to a washing machine or dryer, driving around town looking for where to wash her clothes. Years later, when she did a masters degree in sustainable business … it was an idea she couldn’t let go of. Her final project ended up being a plan for a fictional laundromat, a place she called Spin Laundry Lounge.
Morgan Gary: So I kind of went back to those college days of, ‘oh, I really wish there was another opportunity for the laundry to be kind of a fun community space.’
Neil: Today, in her very much non-fictional/real-life laundromat, which she opened in 2014, there are regular events – art exhibitions, trivia nights, birthday parties…
Even arcade games and pinball machines – so you can play while you wait for your washing…
Morgan Gary: We’ve done comedy shows, DJ sets. We did a cocktail workshop. We have a projector, so we’ll have movie nights and just different events going on. Sometimes Sunday cartoons for the kids or you know, the football game on.
I think it’s really an exciting thing to kind of gather at a laundromat because it’s something that brings everybody together. Everyone has to wash their clothes.
Neil: That’s right: Everyone has to wash their clothes.
If you live alone, maybe you put on a load every week or two … or if you have a family with toddlers, there might be a cycle spinning every other day.
Often it’s a mundane task we learn to do growing up, from our own families/parents. We do our laundry on auto-pilot. It’s not something we usually reflect on, question, or talk about with other people.
But today on Living Planet, that’s exactly what we’ll be doing.
We’re going deep on dirty laundry. And we’re doing this because the way we wash our clothes does matter. I’m Neil King.
Our laundry appliances guzzle energy and water, chemicals from detergents can seep into waterways, and our favorite T-shirts shed polluting microplastics every time they get washed.
So what will it take to make this whole clothes-washing chore more sustainable? How can we tweak our laundry routines to help the planet … without compromising on hygiene?
These were some of the questions weighing on Morgan Gary’s mind when she decided to start her laundromat business.
That’s why, she says, besides creating a fun place for people to come to wash clothes, she wanted her laundromat to put the environment front and center.
Morgan Gary: The laundry industry is incredibly wasteful and there’s so many laundromats in every city across the world…An industry that hasn’t changed a lot. It’s kind of, you know, any city that you go into, especially across the US, not a lot differentiates them from each other. And so it was just a really good opportunity for me to kind of explore some ways to make it more environmentally friendly.
Neil: But while Morgan is trying to put a new ‘spin’ on doing laundry in a social space – the reality is that for many people in the West, washing clothes takes place behind closed doors. In the privacy of the home.
It’s easy and super convenient to just put on a load.
And the result is that people today wash their clothes more than at any other time in history.
Thanks to washing machines, we no longer need to spend hours scrubbing, pounding and wringing laundry by hand – a physically demanding job that in the past was often done at public wash houses, usually by women.
In wasn’t till the 1950s that washing machines became a common feature in homes.
Today, most households in North America and Europe have one. And ownership is shooting up in developing countries as well, as living standards rise and these appliances become more affordable.
Let’s get into some numbers real quick. So right now, there are around 1.3 billion washing machines in homes worldwide.
It’s estimated that all these domestic washing machines use the equivalent of around 23,000 Olympic swimming pools of water every single day.
And they’re responsible for about 2 percent of the global electricity consumption.
Each year, the number of units sold is increasing globally. By the end of the decade, it’s estimated there’ll be 1.4 billion of them.
All those machines … heating water, washing, tumbling, spinning clothes so that they come out clean…
And at the same time, greenhouse gas emissions from laundry are going up as well.
One study from the US estimated that residential laundry – that’s including washing machines and dryers – accounted for 179 million tons of the country’s CO2 per year –  about the same as powering 23 million homes.
Then there’s the detergent that goes into every wash… the soap component that breaks down oil and dirt in most detergents is derived from fossil fuels. It’s a bit tricky to find accurate statistics, and it depends on the product and country, but according to Procter & Gamble, the ingredients in detergent account for about one-fifth of the carbon footprint of laundry in Europe. And when these chemicals come out the other end of the washing machine, they can enter waterways, where they degrade and release heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. These chemicals can also affect aquatic ecosystems.
And finally, our laundry is a major source of microplastics. When our clothes tumble around in the washing machine and dryer, they shed tiny fibers.
Microfibers from synthetic textiles are the most abundant microplastics found in the environment . It’s estimated that up to a third of microplastics generated worldwide come from laundry. And they end up polluting waterways, the ocean, soil and the air.
Don’t worry, there are some ways to shrink laundry’s environmental footprint.
How we wash our clothes is often a well-established routine. So taking a good critical look at our laundry habits and making some adjustments can already help, according to Sonali Diddi.
Sonali Diddi: I don’t think a lot of people consider the environment as we think about doing our laundry. It is something which we just do.
Neil: Sonali is an associate professor at the department of design and merchandising at Colorado State University in the US. And we wanted to speak to her because she was part of the “Green Your Laundry” initiative at her university to promote sustainable laundry practices.
As part of the project, she conducted a survey of around 1,000 students living on campus to see how they washed their clothes. And she found that those habits were sometimes pretty wasteful.
Sonali Diddi: 40-50% of the kids in our survey would not wait till a full load of washing… And one other pattern which we found was that perception of clean, like if I just wore it once I would still want it to be washed…and it’s like you could just air dry it… almost half of our sample… just washed because they just wore it once.
Neil: Only one-fifth of students chose detergents that were environmentally friendly. 42% also mistakenly believed that filling the washing machine to capacity would not get clothes as clean.
Sonali Diddi: So kind of just making sure that a full load washing would be really helpful than just doing whenever I want just this one shirt and just doing laundry.
Neil: Washing a full load of clothes is a far better use of energy than running a half-empty cycle. Sonali says choosing a quick wash, rather than one that runs for hours, is also easier on our clothes and saves resources. But perhaps the biggest step consumers can take, she says, is washing with cold water instead of hot.
In the US, that might mean selecting ‘tap cold’ on the machine. Or in Europe, choosing a setting that’s 30 degrees Celsius or lower. That’s 86 degrees Fahrenheit for our American listeners.
Sonali Diddi: There’s this perception that hot water cleans it better, but there is lack of awareness that the washing machines have advanced so much that hot water is not required, and even the detergents have advanced so much in how they are made now that you don’t need hot water to get it clean. So that’s like a big misconception among consumers, individuals and everyone.
Neil: In the US, around 90 percent of the energy (for source, click on ‘tips’ tab on website) to operate a washing machine goes towards heating the water.
Sonali Diddi: Hot water not only is not energy efficient, but also affects the durability of clothes. So it weakens the fibre – again, it’s not required. And many of at least the current blends of polyester or synthetic base do not do well with hot water. So that itself is a problem.
Neil: A striking difference she noticed when she moved to the US, was that dryers dominate.
More than 80% of American households have their own clothes dryer. And these appliances account for at least 3% of energy used in US homes.
They’re not nearly as common in other countries. Here in Germany, only around 42% of households have one. But the global market for clothes dryers is growing – particularly in Asia.
Sonali Diddi: Especially in the US, line drying is not a thing, and that is even more environmentally unsustainable because the energy it takes not just to wash but also to dry and it’s as simple as just you could go out and dry it, but I think the infrastructure is not built for it…. which is very weird, especially you know coming from a country where line drying was very common.
Neil: Dryers account for more than 70% of laundry’s total electricity consumption in the US. So cutting out this step makes a big difference too – simply hanging clothes in the sun on a clothes line or even indoors on a rack is the most eco-friendly way to dry.
Sonali Diddi: There are huge energy savings when you do not use your drying machines … And again, not necessary that you know clothes need to be dried every time in a drying machine, they can be hang dried as well.
Neil: Laundry appliances have become much more efficient over the past few decades. Today, washing machines, on average, use 70% less energy than in 1990, according to the trade organization, the American Cleaning Institute.
But at the same time, washing machine sales are rising, and people are doing more laundry than ever before… so emissions are still going up.
Morgan Gary: So once you have everything loaded in, you can pay with your credit or debit card or your phone or quarters…(fade under)
Neil: At her laundromat in Portland, Morgan Gary says chatting to customers about how they choose to wash their clothes is a big part of her business’s sustainability focus. Ultimately, she hopes people coming in will start rethinking this mundane chore, and the environmental impact it leaves behind.
Morgan Gary: They have kind of their routines and how they do their laundry and a lot of times it has to do with kind of separating lots of different types of things and washing, you know, many, many different machines. And what we let people know about is our machines are meant to handle a lot of laundry. And so it’s OK to wash more things together instead of separating. Sometimes people would separate by every single color, you know, all the orange clothes and purple clothes and, you know, and it looks pretty. It looks like a rainbow, but it’s not necessary.
And yeah, I think that just kind of chatting with them and sharing that that’s a possibility shifts their thinking.
Neil: Another key part of the laundromat’s eco cred is the way it operates. Morgan says they currently offset around 30% of the power they use with clean energy programs, and the goal is to eventually get to 100%. They have an e-car for small laundry deliveries, but they still have a conventional van for bigger jobs.
And then there are the washers and dryers.
Morgan Gary: So a lot of our sustainability kind of lies within the machines that we use. So we looked at all of the different options for washers and dryers and we wanted to pick the most energy efficient that we could find. So they would save on all of our utility bills and the water usage per pound washed… especially when we’re washing lots of, lots of laundry all day long every day.
Our machines are very fast, so the washes take anywhere from like 16 minutes to Max about 30 and the and the drying takes anywhere from like 18 to 36 minutes. So it’s very, very fast to get in and out….
Neil: Morgan says she always advises filling up the machines as much as possible, washing on a cold setting, and then hanging clothes up to dry.
Morgan Gary: Being able to share with them that, you know, washing on cold or air drying, like don’t even use our dryers. It’s so beautiful out. Go ahead and hang your things on carts. We have hangers available for our customers so they can hang their clothes up and wheel it outside. They can bring it home and hang it on their line or on their balcony. So just letting them know that that’s an option that they don’t have to use the dryer.
The more heat that you apply to it, the faster that they degrade. So just all of these things that we can kind of share with them in a space I think is, is really, you know, important. And then they can, you know, they can decide things that they want to add to their routine or not. But we’re there to kind of help and share if they’d like to learn more.
Neil: Laundering can be a harsh process. It can affect how long clothes last – and how much microplastic they shed.
Studies have shown that things like hot water, longer wash cycles and using more detergent than necessary, can damage a fabric’s structure and lead to more microplastics being released. A study out of the UK found that washing with cold water instead of warm, and running a short 30-minute cycle rather than a long one, can reduce microfiber shedding by 30%.
One solution to the problem could be fitting washing machines with special filters to prevent microfibers being released with wastewater. France was the first country to introduce rules obligating all new washing machines to be equipped with a filter from January 2025. Australia has also announced plans to ‘phase-in’ filters after 2030.
On the industry side, some researchers and textile manufacturers are designing fabrics with new finishing treatments to reduce microfiber shedding.
And there are also microplastic-trapping balls and laundry bags that can be put inside the washing drum with clothes to prevent fibers from escaping. Studies suggest these devices can potentially collect up to a third of microfibers. 
Morgan Gary: That is something that. Oh my goodness. I wish there was more conversation around, but we definitely talk about it all the time at Spin. We actually sell two different products, the Guppy Friend Bag and the Cora Ball .. that people can use in the washers at Spin or at their homes .. and kind of run some educational campaigns around them to kind of share what they’re used for. Something that I’m actually looking at different filters and things that we can install in our system as well to kind of catch before it goes further. There’s some options right now, but I’m kind of continuing to do some research and figure out what the best model would be for kind of a large scale laundry like ours. But yes, it’s, it’s, it’s unfortunate because it’s something that we just don’t really see because it’s so small, right?
Neil: Morgan isn’t alone in wanting to inspire change in the way her customers approach laundry.
In the US, and here in Europe, there have been public information campaigns to encourage people to adopt more environmentally friendly practices – like washing their clothes on cold.
There’s the “Cold Water Saves” initiative, the “I prefer 30 (degrees)” campaign and Tide detergent’s “Turn to Cold” campaign – to name a few.
A similar campaign backed by the World Wildlife Fund here in Germany is aiming to get people to switch from 40 degrees to 30 degrees Celsius – or 104 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s a change that could cut laundry’s CO2 emissions by almost 40%, according to the environment group.
But research shows that, when it comes to laundry habits, changing consumer behavior isn’t so easy.
It’s clear that using cold water rather than hot is better for the environment. It saves energy, prolongs the life of clothes, and minimizes the amount of microfibers being shed.
But in a survey of 12,000 adults from across Europe, almost half said they were reluctant to use cold water because they weren’t convinced their laundry would come out clean.
Do they have a point? I mean, our laundry comes into contact with all sorts of dirt and bodily fluids. Can cold water really kill harmful bacteria, and get rid of serious smells?
Markus Egert: Sustainability and hygiene, they are a little bit, you know, I don’t know in English… in conflict.
OK, so my name is Markus Egert and I work as a professor for microbiology and hygiene at Furtwangen University that is in southwest Germany.
Usually you can say that the higher the temperature, the better the hygiene… But it depends on the microbes, and of course it also depends on the laundry… So you have to think a little bit – what kind of laundry do I have?
Neil: Markus is an expert in this area, and he’s spent a lot of time studying the microbes lurking in our dirty laundry and in our washing machines. There are a few main ones to be aware of:  
Markus Egert: Many are human skin bacteria like Staphylococci for instance, you have of course, if you wash underwear, you have classical fecal bacteria. You have a lot of water bacteria like Pseudomonas for instance. With fungi, yeah. For instance, if you have athlete’s foot, this is a fungus.
Neil: But here’s the upshot: Markus says that for a regular load of laundry, like for your T-shirts, jeans, or clothes you’ve worn to the office, it’s enough to use cold water – so 20 degrees or 30 degrees Celsius -with a normal detergent. For getting rid of smells, dirt and microbes, cold water should get the job done.
Markus Egert: So usually 30° and a liquid detergent reduces the amount of microbes by let’s say two to three log scales. That is 99.9%. And each germ reacts individually, you know, So there are differences between different species, between bacteria and fungi, between bacteria and viruses.
Neil: But, he says, the exception is if you’re washing underwear, socks, bedsheets, or towels from the bathroom or kitchen. Then it’s best to wash at 60 degrees Celsius – or 140 degrees Fahrenheit –with a heavy duty detergent. That means ideally one with bleach, he says.
Markus Egert: And you should be especially concerned about hygiene when someone at home is ill, you know, when he has flu or diarrhea. So for this you definitely need high temperatures. If you have children or if you have someone at home that you care for – an older person for instance, that came from the hospital – then you have to care more for hygiene. In other cases, if you have a young couple, no kids, in their 20s, 30s, their hygiene is less important.
Neil: There are growing concerns about climate change and our impact on the planet. And there’s also more and more focus on what people can do to make more environmentally friendly choices in their everyday lives.
But when it comes to washing clothes, simply switching to greener habits is easier said than done.
Because there are other, arguably more powerful psychological drivers, that dictate how we deal with our laundry.
That might explain why people are washing their clothes now more than ever – even at the expense of the environment.
The average American household does about 300 loads of laundry a year. In Europe, it’s around 220 washes. This partly stems from the fact that washing clothes has become so cheap and convenient. But there could be something else at play:
Erik Klint: I think that the fear of being perceived as somebody (who) is unclean drives this behavior. So if we intuitively understand that being dirty or having sweat stains or smelly or odorous clothing, that can trigger disgust. Then of course, I don’t want to even risk that. And well, if then it becomes very easy to do the laundry, why shouldn’t you?
Neil: That’s Erik Klint. He’s a PhD student at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.
Erik Klint: The main issue is always about this high amount and ever increasing amount of consumption. So obviously we live in a society where it’s important for people to have clean clothes, but that doesn’t mean that we should wash our clothes every time or each time we have them on, because then we basically washing clean clothes.
Neil: He’s been investigating the psychology behind our laundry habits. And what’s stopping people from making eco-friendly choices – like using cold water, or washing their clothes less often.
His conclusion? The fear of being perceived as dirty or unclean when we go out in public is SO strong, that it tends to override concerns for the environment. 
Erik Klint: It doesn’t matter if we try to change a behavior because the behavior itself is causing a lot of emissions. We need to target the underlying motivation for the behavior, in this case for laundering. It doesn’t really matter if you want to start to say that, well, you can’t wash so often. We need to target the underlying motivation – that is to be socially accepted, to fit in into society and what people believe that they need to do in order to experience that.
Neil: Erik led a study published in the journal PLOS ONE earlier this year. And in it he suggests that rather than imploring people to reduce their laundry emissions and change the way they wash clothes, it would be more effective to rewind… To look at what’s going through their head when they chuck a garment in the laundry basket rather than reuse it. Basically: How do they decide when something is dirty?
Erik Klint: We wash because the laundry bin is full. We wash because we need a specific shirt or pants or trousers the next day or we, in Sweden, where we have share laundries, well, that’s the time of the month that we booked the access to the shared laundry facility. So that’s when we’re going to wash.
So if we try to target people once they’re in the laundry room and start to run a washing machine, then it’s too late. We need to focus on the behaviors that precede laundering, like how we generate laundry, they are affected by our psychology, like how often we use our shirts or clothes and how sensitive we are to when we are evaluating stains or odors.
Neil: So if our behavior is so heavily influenced by these social fears, or the risk that, god forbid, we might commit a “cleanliness violation” – what does that mean for efforts to make laundry habits more sustainable?
Erik says one idea could be public campaigns that normalize the idea of wearing clothes multiple times before they end up in the laundry basket. Washing clothes less often would save energy, mean fewer microplastics and detergent residue entering the environment, and lead to clothes lasting longer.  
Erik Klint: I mean in a sense it would be interesting if we could get like this, you know, on social media this sometimes these challenges to raise awareness or something like that… to have a challenge like how many days can you use your clothes without somebody commenting or noticing that you’ve been using it?
Like to just address or to control whether the fear is there or if it’s just in your head. And my, my guess is that mainly in our head… Most of the time we’re so concerned about our own: like ‘I’ve been using this T-shirt twice now. Maybe somebody noticed,’ but that’s the case for the majority of people, I would argue. And everybody’s so concerned about themselves that they don’t notice that everybody else is also. You can’t remember what people were wearing yesterday. At least I can’t remember what people were wearing with yesterday… it’s more about appearing clean rather than having newly washed clothes. So fake it till you make it basically.
Neil: Erik says that because of his research, he’s had many interesting conversations about laundry – a topic that’s usually not openly talked about. He’s also changed his relationship to washing clothes as a result. For example, he says he’s now more likely to air his clothes out so they can be worn again, rather than put them straight into the laundry basket.   
Erik Klint: A lot of people that come to me and like, when you start to discuss this say like, well, I don’t really want to spend time doing the laundry. It takes too much time. And I can’t really understand why I would do that because my clothes are clean, so I just air them. I rotate between maybe three sets of clothes and then I wash them because that gives the illusion that I change clothes. But I, I really just air them out and maybe brush them off and remove a little stain by hand. And then I use it three days later and people think that I’ve washed it in between and that sort of like you, you both. What do you say? You have the cookie but you can still eat it?
Neil: Morgan Gary is convinced laundromats like hers have a role to play in lightening the burden on the environment.
Because they can spread awareness about greener ways to wash… build community around sustainable laundry…
…and also because their very existence means not everyone needs to have their own washer and dryer at home.
Morgan Gary: I think a laundromat is definitely just a way similar to like car share programs. You know, not everyone needs to have a car. You can ride public transit. You could participate in a ride share. Same thing with laundry. You don’t necessarily have to have your own washer and dryer. You can use the laundromat and share utility and the machines with the community and save a lot.
Neil: Since setting up Spin Laundry Lounge 10 years ago, Morgan has been able to expand the business – opening a second laundromat in Portland in 2018.
Morgan Gary: I think that kind of bringing laundry back to these public spaces and kind of like re-imagining the laundromat, it’s so important for kind of the social fabric of our communities and being able to meet up with friends and talk and especially with, you know, just more and more isolation happening with work from home. You know you’re not really leaving your house. You don’t have to leave your house.
I would say at least half of our customers, they’ll end up meeting friends and oh, I’m waiting for so and so I’m going to wait to start my machine. They’re on their way, that sort of thing. So yeah, I think it’s giving people kind of a reason to meet up and connect and have meaningful relationships and be able to do something that is necessary, like laundry.
And I think just the more that we can share with our customers and educate, you know, the conversations can, can spark change.
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