Surely the test for a laundry product depends on how dirty the laundry is in the first place?

Unless someone is playing in the mud or getting really smelly from exercise most of our laundry today is lightly soiled. I rarely see greasy work clothes from car mechanics, or toddlers' clothes covered in spaghetti sauce and if any such items came into the house I could use a special treatment or a heavier duty detergent on those items or on a particular load.

I am not a laundry freak, but I do think we spend a lot of effort washing clothes that are not really very dirty. A towel that has been used to dry after showering can be hung and is fine for the next day and only needs to be changed weekly and a sweatshirt can be worn many times if it has been used only as an extra layer for warmth.

I think the best thing for the climate is to launder only when items really need them and to use the strongest detergents only when necessary. I would rather the products have less artificial ingredients for making clothes smell clean or fragrant than get rid of such rarely made stains on our clothes.

Now of course, those living with manual workers or a houseful of young children may need to do more laundry, but even then selective loads with different products might make most sense.

I looked at some of the linked articles, and I believe the conclusion was that these new products were significantly more expensive per load. I would say I'm willing to pay a premium, but a 25% premium is just a bit too high.

We know from experience with electric cars that prices have to be closer to comparable for broad market success. Of course, those are big ticket items so a 25% premium for an EV is thousands of dollars. Maybe it matters less for laundry products when we're talking about 13 cents/load premium!

We switched to using wool balls instead of fabric softener sheets and while those balls are cheaper (and much better for towels where you want the fabric to absorb more) they don't seem to help with static. Maybe a small price to pay.

I agree with @bystander that reducing the number of loads is probably the first line of environmental defense. If you can reduce loads by 25%, then the switch to the cleaning strips is a wash (pun intended) in terms of cost, and a win environmentally.

I use the laundry strips but today I gave in and purchased a small bottle of TIDE. The strips don't remove stubborn stains. Having said that, I also pretreated stains with extra detergent when I used TIDe He. Can't pretreat with the strips. But I sure like the extra room on my laundry area shelf.
As for the dryer balls, they are great! The penguin ones are particularly cute.

The "premium" for laundry strips is 50%, not 25%. Strips are 25% more expensive than TIDE PUR CLEAN. I'll stick to Tide and Downey. If you really want to save the environment (no more throw away plastic bottles) you can make your own laundry detergent. I've never done it (nor would I) but I always come across it when reading "saving money" articles.

Echoing "Bystander"'s comment - not washing things that don't need washing is the easiest and most cost effective way to cut down on detergent, energy, cost, effort. Of course - set your standards too low, and you end up stinking. On the other hand, if you become indistinguishable from the "good earth" around you, that's very environmental... ;)

Great point about irrational aversions, and it takes some self-awareness to recognize when this is influencing our behavior. Often it's a combination of rational and irrational aversions, I think. For example, I'm trying to eat fewer animal products. I'm still learning how to make unadulterated plant-based food more satisfying and I haven't quite gotten there. (Probably there are irrational factors contributing to whether certain foods are more or less satisfying.) At the same time, I have also been trying out the engineered foods such as the latest fake meat and fake egg products. The fake meat and eggs are pretty close to the real thing, although I have a small amount of irrational aversion to them -- I don't quite trust them and they seem slightly icky. But from a rational aversion perspective, they are also more expensive! The fake meat costs more than organic grass-fed ground beef. And the fake eggs cost more than eggs from pastured hens, purchased from the farmers market. So, like, more expensive than the expensive version of the real thing.

Maybe the fake meat and eggs and the laundry strips will come down in price if they get more popular? Gonna try the laundry strips soon.

Thanks,
Rachel

we use old bars of ivory soap for our laundry. when they get thin, I take a vegetable peeler and make small shavings which I then toss into the washer.

my husband was a youth missionary and told me that in Central America, the villagers do their laundry by the riverbank and use rocks to pound the laundry clean.

he said it is very hard on softer cotton fabrics as his shirts wore out after a couple months or so of village washing.

he then adopted to dress like the villagers as the materials used in their clothing is much coarser, like canvas.

Being elderly, I have a lady who stops by and does my machine washables at her house so the choice of detergent is no longer a problem or issue in my home.

Huh. I can't recall ever seeing these in the store. Where did you get them, Sherry? I'd be willing to try them.

I love all these comments, they really made me smile.

@Rachel, you are really getting at what this blog post is about, and I love your term for it, “irrational aversions”. There is no good reason why I won’t try these strips. They were a gift, so I didn’t even pay for them, and they are right with my other detergent. Is it because I hate doing laundry and worry I’ll “waste” a load with them? But why am I so skeptical about them to begin with?

In this case, laundry detergent, it doesn’t matter so much. The point is, when this concept of “irrational aversion” is generalized, either to something more important like food (as you write about), or to a more influential person, like a car salesman or an HVAC installer, then it becomes really problematic. These aversions slow down progress. How can we get more comfortable embracing new things? (BTW, coincidentally, I have the fake eggs in my refrigerator, have yet to open them, and my daughter made me swear that I would never serve her anything made with them. So even the new generation is susceptible.)

@Elie, imo you don’t get a pass just because you outsource your laundry. For example, you could let your laundry person know about this new product if it’s something you want to try. As a better example, if you want to eat more vegetarian but your favorite restaurant only has one veggie dish, your job is to say something and encourage them to offer more veggie options.

@Bystander and others made a great point about doing less laundry to begin with. YES!

To @maryann’s comment, doing less laundry would certainly be a lot more compelling if we were all doing laundry with rocks. An HVAC guy told me once that the appliance he dislikes most is the tankless water heater because it makes people so careless with their hot water use. It’s an interesting thing to think about.

@eileen, one of the articles I read said you can pretreat with the strips, you just have to dissolve one in a cup of water. (That said, imo stressing about what you use to pretreat laundry is not a good use of our mental energy.)

Several of you made a point that these cost more. Yes, and I should have mentioned it. But it isn’t material to the main point of the blog. (They were sitting on my shelf and I wasn’t using them.) But I’m sure the high cost affects which retailers bother to stock them, and so whether people see them to begin with.

@Consider, these were a gift, but you can buy them on Amazon (there are four kinds) and I’m sure many other places.

Anyway, thanks all for the very fun and insightful comments...

I will plunk down one more thought about laundry detergent - and where it's meaningful. "Laundry to Landscape" greywater systems are very simple - effectively, people use the water dumped by their washing machine to water landscape plants. I believe it used to be illegal - different sorts of greywater, such as from the shower or dishwasher, can pose a health risk if completely untreated - but I believe washing machine water is considered safe out of the drain. A system can cost as little as $100 (basically, a pipe) - the one caveat is that the detergent should be biodegradable, and, ideally, low in sodium for long term use (you don't want salt building up in the soil). That may require a special detergent; but considerable water can be saved this way.

Laundry to landscape system (good for a drought!)

Web Link

@Alan YEARS ago when we lived in Toronto, washing machines were equipped with an option to save and recycle the water into the next load of laundry. Double laundry sinks, essential for this, were common in homes. Saved water and detergent. Never gave it much thought at the time, just did it.

@eileen - That's interesting; it is a sort of frugality that's rare these days. I suppose you just wouldn't recycle the water if the laundry was dirty enough. Although - with high efficiency machines - we might get a similar effect, as they use much less water per load (ideally - just exactly what you need for one load).

Really excellent blog, and definitely an issue I struggle with in myself and with friends and family on a regular basis.

When ever someone close to me has their HVAC, water heater, or car break down, they know they're going to get “the talk" from me about how a climate friendly solution like solar, heat pumps, and EV's are more cost effective, convenient, and absolutely necessary if we're gonna slow down this whole climate change thing. But my success rate is soooo low, even if I have extremely convincing teaching tools like fun to drive EV's or black and white PG&E bills.

It seems like “big idea" changes are adopted in longer-than-generation timelines, which is just really unfortunate given the situation we're looking at on climate change. Is someone studying this phenomenon in academia, I wonder?

@Cameron, I would love to learn more about approaches to dealing with this kind of hesitation or aversion. More generally, there is so much social science work needed to hit our goals but I don't find as much emphasis on that as I do on the physical sciences.

I do know that "people are doing/using x" seems to work. https://theweek.com/articles/792616/peer-pressure-help-solve-climate-change

"People are already essentially informed, a lot of people are politically not opposed to (climate action), a lot can financially afford it; so the question is, what's holding them back?" Sparkman says. "It could be that other (people's) inaction is pretty debilitating. Maybe when you see information about others mobilizing and starting to make a change, perhaps there's something about it that can be contagious. Our research suggests that can be the case."

Economists will also say that price makes a big difference. But if "cheaper" is a complicated story it gets harder. EVs are cheaper overall, but more expensive up front. Same with LED bulbs. Explaining why a $2500 rebate on a HPWH is a great deal and will save money, it's not an easy sell. But my electrician saying (as he did) "Boy, I am installing a lot of these heat pump water heaters" -- that may get peoples' attention because they don't want to miss out.