Footprint of Washing Clothes – Who Knew?

Washing clothes has a significant impact on your personal carbon emissions. As a good friend of mine would say "who knew?" Well the good folks at P&G know but for some reason aren't telling. So this post is everything you wanted to know about laundry but didn't know to ask (a theme I will pick up on later).

According to research in the U.K. the average wash generates 1.12 lbs of CO2e. Emissions are 34% more if you use hot water and 36% less if you use warm water. 70% of the energy involved runs the washing machine with 90% used to heat the water. Washing clothes accounts for 14% of total household electricity consumption (in the U.K.). This equates to over 300 lbs of CO2e per household annually which is roughly equivalent to driving a car 300 miles.

But wait. Laundry detergent, for reasons that become quite clear, is the leading reformulated product. Laundry detergent has been reformulated no less than 4 times since 2005!

1. Concentrated (2X). Wal-Mart, that sells 800 million units/year and accounts for 25% of laundry detergent sales in the U.S., is generally credited with ramping up the process when they decided to only sell concentrated detergent. Wal-Mart, always with the sharp pencil and calculator, figured out that they were shipping and stocking (with valuable shelf space) a significant amount of water, filler and other ingredients that didn't add real value to the product, but added considerable logistics costs. According to the company, the move to sell only concentrated liquid detergent will save more than 400 million gallons of water, 95 million pounds of plastic resin and 125 million pounds of cardboard.


2. Cold Water. Tide launched Tide Coldwater at the beginning of 2005 that was specifically formulated to do as a good a washing job in cold water.
   
3. 3X. Unilever's all Small & Mighty 3X brand is a further concentration launched in the fall of 2005.


4. Gel. P&G launched Ariel Excel Gel in the U.K. late last year. It is being currently test marketed in the U.S. This is a new formulation at two levels. First, it is a gel which means it requires less water and less ingredients overall like stabilizers, thickeners and solvents used in liquid detergents. Ariel Excel Gel was also designed to wash effectively in cold water (15° C or 50° F). According to P&G, the gel product uses 30% of the energy and 40% of the water in manufacturing and 14% less packaging in its super concentrated form.
   

This is a prime example of how consumer product companies can compete on real value add. Imagine if more of P&G's $2.2. billion in R&D was focused on reducing carbon emissions. Or for that matter, some of the $2.8 billion it spent last year on advertising (down from $4.6 billion in 2005) was channeled to find low-carbon breakthroughs. The consumer products industry is incredibly competitive. It is large and not fast growing. As consumers, let's give them something useful to focus on!