Wash Away the Energy

By Noah

A huge drain on heating and electric costs that plagues the average North American household is a pair of “necessary” suckers that bleed energy off the grid.  Week after week people load their dirty clothes into the laundry machine, push a few buttons, and then disappear.  After a not-so-quick change-over to the dryer and a magical laundry fairy, we get soft, fluffy, clean clothes that smell like “Ocean Spray” or “Evergreen Forest”.  What we seem to forget however is not just the amount of energy consumed to produce these apparently beautiful smells, but also how ugly the amount of money that energy costs us, smells.

For starters, let’s get a few facts provided by the United States Department of Energy: 

• 20% of monthly heating costs that an average home pays are directly a result of heating water specifically for laundry
• 90% of the energy used to wash a normal load of laundry comes from heating the water alone. 
• Hot water laundry loads produce up to 5x the amount of green-house emissions per-load than cold water laundry loads. 

That’s an incredible amount of energy used specifically to wash clothes in hot water; something I find quite perplexing seeing the fact that almost every single washer available on the market provides the patron with the option of using various temperatures of water during the wash cycle.

Enter Cold Water Detergents.

Numerous well known detergent brands are pumping out laundry detergents that boast equal cleaning power in cold water versus the conventional hot/warm water detergents.  Many of these detergents allow washing and rinsing in cold water, use less amounts of detergent per load, and due to the use of cold water prevent the risk of bleeding or fading rich colours while in the washer.

So I decided to take a trip to the Shopper’s Drug Mart down the street to compare some prices between regular detergents, and these environmental bail-out products.  Although different stores will offer different prices, (and you might find better prices at eco-conscious and organic stores) I figured I’d get the dirt from a mega-store like Shoppers to keep the facts as unbiased as possible.  I found out that a normal bottle of Tide, and a bottle of Tide Coldwater are the exact same price, $11.49, the only difference being that Tide boasted 3 extra loads than Tide Coldwater (35 loads vs 32 loads respectively).  Other common brands of detergents followed suite with hot-water detergents and their cold-water counterparts costing roughly the same amount, varying only very slightly in load number.  The cost varied depending on the brand, but all detergents maintained prices somewhere between $8.99 and $11.49 per bottle, with between 28 and 35 loads per bottle.  After comparing the facts, it looks as though going ‘Cold’ will only cost you about 2¢ per load; not a bad price considering the energy savings you’ll be making.

However what really surprised me, was that the “Biolife” brand, which boasts not only natural and plant ingredients, but also cold water “technology” was only $8.49, and contained the same 35 loads as Tide.  Again, I find this puzzling: as opposed to the food world where sustainable natural products cost more; the laundry world makes the sustainable, plant derived, all natural cold-water detergent the cheapest. 

Is there really any decision to make at this point?

If you’re still not sold on the ability of cold-water detergents to do a reasonable job of cleaning your particularly soiled clothes, the USDE suggests that switching to a ‘warm’ water cycle instead of hot will clean the really oily and bad stains better than cold water while still reducing water heating costs by 50% in an average laundry load. What about some other energy saving tips like using a cool-down cycle in the dryer, where the last 10 minutes of the cycle uses residual heat to complete the dry while maintaining the tumbling action.  Or how about using a clothes-line or a drying rack?  If you’re really concerned about the energy costs of laundry then simply cleaning your flint-catcher, or air filter frequently increase the efficiency of the machines, reducing costs overall. 

Regardless of how you look at it, this silent energy sucker that recklessly abuses water heating costs can be beaten!  All it takes is a different type of detergent which is exactly the same price.  Genius.

The only thing that remains now is a public outcry to the Laundromats across the city; a civil demand that they too participate in the reduction of heating costs and energy wasting that help keep us “Mountain Fresh”.  Why not offer a different price for loads of laundry that use cold water instead of hot?  What if one day a person could enter their Laundromat with 50¢ less because they made the conscious decision to purchase cold-water detergents?  A more than reasonable reward for a customer who’s saving the Laundromat money in heating costs, and reducing carbon emissions!  I’m not entirely sure if there is an evil conspiracy council that is currently cackling at our apparent disregard for an easy way to save a few cents…but if there is, I vow I will not rest until us eco-conscious shoppers need only a looney to achieve Ocean Spray freshness.

Laundromats – take heed.  I’m coming for you!