Quick Tips: Laundry

 I recently finished reading Do One Green Thing by Mindy Pennybacker (you can find my review here). I promised that I would share some of Mindy's quick tips on how to live a more sustainable life in future blog posts, and since I am feeling too lazy and pregnant to write about anything creative today, here it goes....
Today's focus will be on how to live more sustainably in the world of doing laundry. The first thing you can do to make your laundering have less of an impact is to hang as much of your laundry to dry outside, letting the sun do the drying instead of your energy-hungry dryer. However, if you live somewhere like I do, and the sun is not out for most of the year, this is sadly a short-term option. I do hang as much laundry outside on non-rainy days as possible, and I also have a drying rack for inside so that I can let small loads air dry. But, in the winter months, I rely pretty heavily on my dryer. To make it more efficient, use your dryer on the sensor setting (if you have one) instead of the timed dry setting.
Another easy way to ease the environmental burden of your laundry is to wash as much of your laundry in cold water as possible. According to Pennybacker, if every house in the US washed 4 out of every 5 loads in cold water (instead of hot) we would prevent 50 M tons of carbon emission per year (that's the same as taking 10 MILLION cars off the road! Wow!) So, save your hot washes for the really nasty washing.
The last quick tip for laundry is to make sure you are using a plant-based, biodegradable detergent. According to Do One Green Thing, if every home replaced one bottle of petroleum based detergent with a plant based one, we could save enough oil to heat 8500 homes for a year. Think how much oil we could save if everyone switched to plant-based detergents permanently! Or, follow my recipe for home made laundry soap and make your own eco-friendly detergent.