Go Green Challenge - Day 12
27 August, 2007 by halfpintpixie
Day 12 : Turn down your washing machine to 30-degrees
I usually wash our clothes at 30 and every so often give them a 40 degree wash, but in general I wash towels & babypixie’s clothes at 40. I rarely do a 60 wash, maybe once a year for bedlinen, and our machine has never experienced the 90 degrees!
Main reason I wash at lower temps is that I tend to lump all colours in together with a magic colour catcher sheet, any warmer and the dyes might overwhelm the sheet.
BBC has an article about possible allergens such as dog dander & pollen remaining on clothing at lower temp washes and recommends:
They found that rinsing fabrics three or four times in cold water after washing at 30 degrees produced results comparable with a much hotter wash.
On a related tangent…. what disturbs me about the whole “Turn to 30″ campaign is that it is being led by Ariel, who have a large environmental section on their website with statistics and ways to reduce your impact… but it’s all greenwashing! Ariel is owned by Proctor & Gamble, whose description on Responsible Shopper reads:
Procter and Gamble has been criticized for failing to remove unsafe and potentially carcinogenic ingredients and from its personal care and food products; sourcing from sweatshops; and failing to deliver on its promise to sell Fair Trade Certified (TM) coffee. Additionally, some of its products are still tested on animals despite rhetoric about ending the use of animal testing.
So yes, by all means, turn to 30, just don’t give P&G your custom while making the change!
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what is this magic colour catcher sheet you speak of? and does it really work? could i wash my precious whites with untrustworthy reds?
no amber, nothing truly has the power to stop the fiendish reds…
Colour catchers are good for stopping black shirts discolouring other colouredy things in a mixed wash (I usually throw 2 in at a time, you can reuse them till they fill with dye). I must admit we don’t own much white stuff so dunno how good it is at protecting them!
Hi , I am an enormous Colour Catcher fan. I’ve been using them for a few months and am totally converted. By the way, I use them at 40 and they are perfectly OK. They have already saved me a fortune in ruined clothes when I washed a red silk shirt in a cotton wash by mistake! Just 2 bright pink sheets of Colour Catcher and everything else survived.
I put whites and colours in together and always run a full load. If I’m a bit concerned about the colours - too many jeans or something red, I just put 2 sheets in instead of 1.
I was finding 30 left some stains in, but now I mostly pour a drop of Ace over the more obvious stains before I put them in the machine and it seems to do the trick.