Green Quickie: Clean Clothes with Less Energy

There are a number of ways to make doing your laundry more environmentally friendly, but I'm going to start with my favorite: cold water. According to the ever-helpful U.S. Department of Energy, "about 90% of the energy used for washing clothes is for heating the water." You may want to read that sentence again. I'll wait. That's a 90% savings just for using cold water. All you have to do is turn the knob one click to the left. Boom. I won't even get into how much CO2 that click can eliminate, but it's a lot, Holmes.

There are plenty of cold water detergents out there now, but I believe the regular brands work just fine. I personally use cold water for all cycles and my clothes are as clean as ever. Now, I have a sweet Energy Star front-loading machine (more on this at a later date), but I'm sure cold water is perfectly adequate for regular old top-loaders as well.

Try it out. If you can't bear to go all the way cold, then go from hot to warm. Baby step it. Depending on your water heater, either your gas or electric bill will thank you.