by Caroline Kramer

Created on: February 13, 2009   Last Updated: February 16, 2009

Worried about the environmental impact of washing your clothes, here are a few simple steps to reduce your laundry footprint.

The first thing is to audit your family's laundry usage. Most of us end up washing things unnecessarily because they get left on the floor or plopped in the corner of a closet when they are not that dirty. In the days when everything had to be washed by hand people thought long and hard about whether things needed washing. Our world is now a cleaner place but there are plenty of places where using something again before washing it will do no harm and, over a lifetime, will save many unecessary loads.

then think about your machine. For all of those of you clinging to top loaders you should consider your next purchase being a front loader. Front loaders use less water because they do not rely on an entire drum-full but rather toss the clothes in a smaller amount. They are kinder on clothes and use less detergent. Another ergonomic advantage of the front loader is that your dryer can go on top - this means that you are unloading the clean and cry things at body height not floor level, not to mention the space saving aspect in smaller houses. Modern machines often have a delay capability on them meaning that you can run them when the demand for electricity is less - at night.

Using your machine efficiently is important. We all know not to overload but underloading all the time is not good either. Although the new machines will adjust water levels to their loads you are still mechanically running an appliance for a very few clothes. These water saving features are best used for those emergency soccer uniform washings which have to be done then and there - regularly run your machine fairly full. Think about drying time when you plan your loads - try to group things with short drying times (polyester, nylon) and things with long drying times (towels) together. This saves every drying cycle being a long one.

Finally the detergent. There are many products which claim to save the planet and wash your clothes, the problem is not all of them work very well. A great way to pick out products is to go to an on line seller and read the customer feedback - remember to check how many people have given feedback as well as what it says. If 100 people have bothered to write and say a product is good, it probably is. The key is to avoid phosphates (which are now illegal in some states anyway) and look for biodegradable products. Also consider whether the detergent is concentrated - that means you use less volume per load which means less packaging overall.

There is no one thing which will revolutionise our washing machine use - it is a series of small steps, choice of products and how we use our appliances.

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