How to Make Your Laundry More Sustainable, with Oxwash

Do you ever think about how much water goes into washing your clothes? You’re not alone! 48% of people rarely or never think about the water they use whilst doing laundry according to research! It’s not our fault, we don’t actually see the water that gets used in a washing machine so it’s easy to forget about it. We’re here to spread awareness about reducing our water consumption!

We did some digging and found that up to 360 billion litres of water goes down the drain each year from UK washing machines - the equivalent of draining Windermere (300bn litres), England’s largest natural lake.

Shockingly, in March, the Environment Agency issued a stark warning that the UK could see water shortages in 2050 if action is not taken to conserve supplies. Here are our top tips for saving water with your laundry...

Fill up the washing machine (but don’t overfill…)

If you do your laundry at home, ensure that you don’t put a wash on until the laundry machine will be filled. This will not only mean less loads of laundry for you to complete (yes, less annoying beeping at you constantly) but will end up saving you money on bills. 

Note: With heavily soiled laundry, be wary of overfilling the washing machine. This means that the laundry doesn’t have enough space to move around and wash effectively. (So many rules, we know!)

Wash it right the first time!

Washing a stain incorrectly can have us sticking our item in the washer over and over again with the false hope of it disappearing. By pre-treating stains correctly before putting them in the washing machine (if in doubt, do research or send it in to professionals) and washing at lower temperatures, this can prevent stains setting in and using the wasteful extra rinse cycle. 

The Power of a Cotton Wash

Opt for a cotton wash when you can! Oxwash’s study identified that cotton (36%) followed by synthetics (20% ) and delicates (5%)  are the most go-to laundry settings.  Synthetics programmes can use more water.  And in 2019, Newcastle University discovered a delicate setting is the worst of all cycles for the environment as it uses the most amount of water, and can cause hundreds of thousands of extra microfibres to shed. 

Use Oxwash 

Oxwash reduces water consumption and saves 4L per 1kg of clothes washed, that’s 26L for your average wash. By using Oxwash for over a year, you’d save a little over all of your drinking water for the whole year! 

The UK-based on-demand laundry service is disrupting the traditional but environmentally costly washing and dry-cleaning processes, by using ozone to sterilize fabrics at lower temperatures. The sustainable laundry service collects your washing, ironing and wet cleaning straight from your doorstep via their fleet of electric cargo bikes - the ideal solution for a green, clean and efficient mode of transport - then washes your clothes using state-of-the-art, low-impact washing technology. Try Oxwash here.*

*Warning: using Oxwash will make you never want to do another load of laundry yourself again

Head to Oxwash to read our post about Organic Cotton using less water!

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