Week 4: Cold water laundry

Photo credit: Average Jane on Flickr

Washing laundry in cold water seems easy enough. It saves energy and supposedly cold water gets the clothes just as clean as warm. But on some level it is just hard to turn the dial from warm to cold, especially with things like soiled cloth diapers and guest room sheets.

Ultimately though, I'm a numbers girl. I searched around and found that TreeHugger had done all the math for me here.

According to that article, 90 percent of the energy used in washing machines is to heat the water. With an electric washer, using hot water instead of cold is the equivalent of driving 9 miles for each load of laundry and releases nearly 9 pounds of CO2 with each load.

In one year, washing in cold water instead of hot:

-Saves 3360 pounds of CO2

-Is equivalent to driving your car 3431 miles less

That is big energy savings and greenhouse gas reductions for such a simple step. It also saves you money. I learned here that washing in cold water also can save you $400 annually (with an electric water heater) and more than $300 (with a gas water heater).

There are detergents made especially for cold water, I may experiment with those if necessary, but for now I'll use my Ecos detergent and see how it goes.

As for the instinct we have to wash our most soiled things in hot water, there is something to this. A CBS News report found that hot water is better at killing dust mites, dog dander, and pollen than is cold water. So for those with allergies, it may be harder to give up the hot water.