Fantastic article in the Weekend Post today – all about the Cold Wash Campaign launched by Michelle Garforth-Venter
The following interesting facts were given:
1 – Using warm wash instead of cold wash has the same impact as driving 14 km in your car
2- Washing every load in hot water for a year is the same as burning 689 liters of petrol in a car
3 – Washing with the hot water cycle for a year creates a carbon footprint equivalent to the effect of gas emissions from one round trip across the country.
4 – Heating water can account for up to as much as one third of your total power use
5 – One “hot load” costs as much as ten cold water loads
6 – 90% of the energy used to wash a load of laundry is for heating the water in the machine
7 – To run about 50 hot water loads in your washing machine takes 50-100 kilowatts of electricity, enough to power a household for a month.
8 – Water heating accounts for an average of 19% of total home energy usage
9 – 70% of South African households wash in hot water
10 – 16% of front load machine users wash at temperatures between 90-95 degrees celcius, another 68% between 30 & 60 degrees celcius
11 – Only 3% of front load machine users wash at cold temperatures
12 – While 161 616 000 washes in front loader machine are hot, only 69 264 000 are cold
