Green up Your Laundry

Green up Your Laundry

There are many ways to get your house greener, and a great place to start is the laundry room. With just a few simple changes, you can make a large impact on your carbon footprint, and your personal release of pollutants.

Using energy star appliances, warm-cold wash cycles and safer cleaners you will green up your laundry. Using a clothes line for drying will make a huge impact, but cleaning your lint screen is a quick and easy way to save energy.

Here are a few tips to help your own green home effect.

Wash:

Purchase a high efficiency washer and dryer.
How old is your washer and dryer? If it is several years old, you are wasting water and energy. It can be a large expense to replace your washer and dryer with new high efficiency Energy Star ones, but you will save on energy, and your clothes will be cleaner. This is a large step, and you might not be ready to do it right away. It is something you plan for and put some money aside for each month until you are ready.

Use a warm-cold or cold-cold laundry water temperature cycle.
If you would like to save a lot of energy when you wash your clothes, stop using hot water. 90% of the energy used to wash clothes in hot water is saved when you set your wash to warm and your rinse to cold. If all th U.S. households would wash their clothes with a warm-cold cycle instead of a hot-hot cycle we could save 100,000 barrels of oil a days worth of energy.

Use Safer cleaners.
Did you know some detergents, bleaches and fabric softeners can be toxic to your family and the environment as a whole. Fragrances and surfactants in some laundry detergents contain hormone-disrupting chemicals. These chemicals can not always be removed in wastewater treatment plants, and can harm the wildlife in the area. Chlorine bleach can create dangerous byproducts, such as dioxin, when flushed down the drain. It is also poisonous to humans and most living things. Try nonchlorine bleach such as OxyBoost or Ecover’s hydrogen peroxide-based option. You can find eco-friendly laundry detergents for the same price as the ones that harm the environment, but you have to check. Look for less-toxic alternatives products made by Ecover, Sun & Earth, Seventh Generation and OxyPrime.

Dryer:

Line Dry.
It is a huge energy and money saver to dry your clothes out side on a line. The clothes dryer is the third largest energy user in an average home, behind the refridgerator, and the washing machine. You would save on average $100 a year if you didn’t use it and line dried all your clothes. Because of cimate and other living situations it is not always practical to line dry all year or sometimes even at all. But remeber, you will save money for any line drying you do, so look for creative solutions.

Clean the lint screen!
It is important to clean the lint screen of your dryer between each and every load. You are wasting energy if you are not being vigilant with this. The ineffeciencys of not cleaning your lint screan can easily add up to 5% of your electricity bill!

It is also advisable to wash and your clothes during off peak hours, roughly 9:00PM-7:00AM. You should also, of course dry them during that time as well if you are using a mechanical dryer. If you are line drying, you should wash them in the morning, so you can use the whole days sun. You should check with your power company about any discounts for power usage during off-peak hours.

If you follow these simple tips, your home will be a little greener.