Natural Environment Blog

Have you ever wondered how much greenhouse gas you were producing every time you threw your laundry into the washing machine?

Same thing with the clothes dryer. Have you ever wondered how much your clothes dryer was contributing towards your carbon footprint?

Well, here are some statistics the Australian Greenhouse Office (AGO) has come up with:

• Washing machine: Each year, the energy used to run an average washing machine produces 90 kilograms of greenhouse gas.
• Warm water: If you wash your clothes using warm water, add another 475 kilograms of greenhouse gas to this. This works out to be around 4 kilograms of greenhouse gas produced per wash.
• Dryer: If you use a dryer, add another 150 kilograms to that.
• Detergents: For top loading washing machines, the production of washing detergent generates around 0.3 kg of greenhouse gas per wash. For front loaders, it’s around half of that.

What surprised me is the amount of greenhouse gas produced by using warm water. I knew clothes dryers used up a lot of energy but I wasn’t expecting the hot water to produce more than 3 times the greenhouse gas compared to the dryer. I’m glad I only use cold water to wash my clothes!

If you combine the 90 kg (from running the washing machine) with 475 kg for the water, you end up with 565 kilograms of greenhouse gas produced each year - just from washing your clothes!

If you use warm water and a dryer, you could be producing a staggering 715 kilograms of greenhouse gas just from doing your laundry!

What to do about this?

By doing the following, you can help reduce your carbon footprint:

• Use cold water to wash your clothes. As seen above, using cold water can significantly reduce the greenhouse gases produced from washing your clothes. By using cold water, you can reduce your greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 4 kilograms per wash!
• Don’t waste washing detergent. Production of washing detergent contributes to greenhouse gases.
• Buy washing detergents made from natural substances. They will contribute much less to your carbon footprint.
• Avoid washing clothes that don’t really need to be washed.
• Another thing we can do is, when clothes shopping, look for clothes with self cleaning properties. Some clothes available today come with a self-cleaning textile finish called NanoSphere.
• Avoid using the clothes dryer. Hang your clothes on the clothes line if you can. With a good breeze, your clothes will be dry in no time!

Organic linen refers to linen that is made from plant fibers as opposed to synthetic means. But more importantly, the plants have been grown without the use of toxic pesticides and fertilizers.

The term “linen” is often used in a generic sense to describe a certain textiles such as bedding, table cloths, towels, etc. This is quite a general use of the term and it doesn’t refer to what the term “linen” was originally used for. Linen originally referred to yarn and fabric made from flax fibers (from the flax plant).

These days linen could be made from flax fibers, cotton, hemp, or it could be synthetic. Therefore, the term linen is now a little ambiguous.

If you are a purist, you might say that true linen is made from flax fibers.

Where Can I get Organic Linen?

Nowadays, there are plenty of products on the market made of “organic linen” or “eco-friendly linen”. While some of these products may be made from flax fibers, many of them are made from other fibers.

• Crespi1797, a company from the 18th century, continue to produce pure linen made from flax
• MikkaWork, a Chinese company, make organic linen
• Australian company, ecoLinen uses organic cotton in their eco-friendly linen products. ecoLinen are the first linen company in Australia to be certified organic by SKAL International
• Rawganique produce organic clothes, towels, and bedding. They use use flax linen as well as hemp and organic cotton in their products

Sometimes it seems that just about everything we buy these days ends up being bad for the environment. I mean, even the clothes we’ve all been buying and wearing for so many years have turned out to be bad for the environment…

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that wearing clothes is bad for the environment! The problem lies in the fabrics that are being used to make our modern day clothes. These fabrics tend to be far from eco-friendly. Here are some examples:

• Cotton: The production of (non-organic) cotton destroys farmland and pollutes waterways. The production of a simple T-shirt requires two pounds of pesticide!
• Dyes: Most common dyes that are used in fabrics contain heavy metals that can be harmful to animals, the natural environment, and ourselves.
• Synthetic polyesters and nylons: These are made from petrochemicals via a process of refining crude oil, which creates horrible pollution.
• Silk: Commercial silk is made by boiling the silkworms’ cocoons, then unwinding the single silk strand onto reels. This results in the silkworms being boiled to death in their cocoons.

What’s more, many fabrics cause further environmental problems when they’re dumped in landfill. Fabrics can typically take hundreds of years (or more) to break down in landfill.

But there is hope. Many major clothing companies are recognizing the environmental problems caused by traditional fabrics, and they’re starting to do something about it. These companies are now producing clothes that are made from eco-friendly fabrics.

Unfortunately, eco-friendly clothes still tend to be the exception rather than the norm. That’s why it’s so important for us, as consumers, to start searching for clothes made from environmentally friendly fabrics. The more of us that do this, the more commercially viable it will be for companies to use eco-friendly fabrics in their clothing lines. Here’s an example of one major clothing company doing just that.

It might not be long before we’re buying clothes made out of spider webs. Don’t laugh, a company in Japan is talking about creating socks, fishing lines, and stockings out of spider-web silk.

For many years now, scientists around the world have been try to find ways of mass producing spider silk. And now, a team of scientists at Shinshu University have had a breakthrough. They’ve devised a way of injecting spider genes into silkworms, which will result in a much stronger silk. This in turn, could lead to a new “super silk”.

Also, Grado Zero Espace and The University of California, have created the world’s first spider-woven fabric produced using modern processes. Apparently the spider woven fabric “feels like silk, is as elastic as nylon and is thirty times stronger than Kevlar”.

At this stage, it’s not entirely clear how eco-friendly these developments will turn out. But they are likely to bring spider web silk one step closer to the mainstream markets. And that’s got to be a good thing for the natural fiber market.