Save the environment by using the clothes steamer more often
By using your hand steamer more often and skipping washes, not only will your clothes last longer, but you will also be doing the environment a great favor.
Did you know that you use an average of about 60 liters of water with every wash? Imagine 60 1 liter coke bottles. The average two-person household does 3 washes per week. This results in about 10,000 liters of water that you use for washing every year. Great if we can limit this a bit, right?!
Sustainable fashion designer Stella McCartney told 'the Observer ' that she never washes or takes her suits to the dry cleaner, even adding that you should wash as little as possible. Quite right because the impact of washing your clothes is, as you can read above, huge. But should we stop washing our clothes altogether?
It happens so often that we throw our clothes in the laundry basket at the end of the day, when they are actually not dirty at all. Unfortunately not really a sustainable habit...
1/3 of the environmental impact of your clothes comes from washing your clothes. And this was already known before we learned how big the problem of microplastics was. With every wash, up to 700,000 microplastics are released, which is extremely harmful to the environment. It is therefore better to wash your clothes as little as possible and it is not at all necessary to wash your clothes after wearing them once, with the exception of underwear, socks and clothing that has been perspired a lot, of course.
But why do we all think this is necessary? The answer is simple: Smart marketing from detergent manufacturers. Mac Bishop, the founder of a clothing brand whose clothes you hardly need to wash, experienced it when he worked for Unilever's marketing team: “ The only way to grow a detergent brand is to make people think that they have to do a lot. wash . ”
In addition to water consumption, there is the energy consumption of a washing machine, which is determined for 80 to 90% by the temperature at which you wash. The higher the temperature, the more power you consume. And high power consumption is -as we know- not only bad for mother earth, but also for your wallet.
Conclusion
When we en masse adhere to Miss Stella McCartney's rule: " If you don't absolutely have to wash it, don't wash it ", we save the environment a lot. An alternative to make your clothes smell fresher is to hang them outside for a few hours, or let them dry clean in the bathroom when you shower. The odors will go out and if you make sure there are no stains, then you have no reason to wash it at all.
Or of course, the fastest and most effective way: just brush the STEAM'R over the fabric, and your favorite item gets a freshening up: bacteria are killed and light odors are steamed out of the textile. Good luck!
