1 Introduction
A recent study of 43 countries showed that household consumption causes more than 60% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and between 50% and 80% of total land, material, and water use (Ivanova et al.
2016). The most dominant categories were mobility, food, and shelter (including clothing consumption and household services). In Europe, domestic laundry on average consumes 4–9% of all the energy used in households, while at 17%, this value is notably higher in Turkey. Meanwhile, 8–12% of all the potable water consumed in households is used for washing clothes (Pakula and Stamminger
2010).
Traditional strategies for limiting environmental impacts from domestic laundry usually focus on technological advancements, for example automation of the laundering process (Pakula and Stamminger
2015). However, these types of improvements tend to coevolve with consumer practices (Shove
2003). A recent study of potential improvements for washing machines exemplifies this relationship. The authors concluded that even though several improvements are possible, the reduction of environmental impacts from laundry is hampered not by the possible technical improvements of the machines, but by the washing habits of the consumers (Laitala et al.
2011). Or in other terms, consumers of today buy more clothing (Peters et al.
2019) and wash it more frequently than during any other time in history (Klepp
2003). This means that even though today’s washing machines can wash at lower temperatures, with less detergent, and with a larger amount of laundry than a decade ago (Graulich et al.
2011; Presutto et al.
2007a), the increased frequency of doing the laundry tends to counteract the technological improvements. In UK, for example, the overall energy associated with washing and drying clothes within households has grown by over 100% between 1970 and 2012 (Yates and Evans
2016). This is despite the fact that the average energy consumption for washing machines in Europe per cycle was cut by more than 50% over that time (Presutto et al.
2007a). This trend is not only limited to the Western world. For example, in China, the ownership of washing machines has grown from 5 to 97% in urban areas and from 0 to 62% in rural areas just during the years 1980–2012, making laundry easier (Wang et al.
2014).
One alterative way to reduce laundry impacts could be to move from private ownership of laundry products, to a community-based system (CBS) or a product service system (PSS) for laundry activities (Mont and Plepys
2007; Tukker
2015). Such alternative systems for laundry have been gaining popularity in circular economy thinking, with articles examining pay-per-use (Bocken et al.
2018) as well as customer preferences for owning, renting, or pay-per-use solutions for washing machines (Lieder et al.
2018). Since CBSs and PSSs (from here on called "shared systems") require fewer laundry machines, it is argued that these types of systems could limit environmental impacts, just as collaborative consumption of the clothes themselves can (Zamani et al.
2017). Previous studies have shown that such systems for domestic laundry could indeed reduce the environmental impacts by 30–50%, compared with private ownership (Garcilaso et al.
2007; Haapala et al.
2008). These findings are positive from an environmental point of view, but it should be noted the results are dependent on contextual factors. This means that resource consumption within both private and shared laundries varies considerably depending on culture, social factors, and availability (Retamal and Schandl
2018). In addition, previous published studies concerning shared systems for domestic laundry do not consider the changed need and material consumption associated with the building itself, or even the impacts associated with the supply of detergents and water (Borg and Hogberg
2014). However, a recent master’s thesis from Linköping University indicated a possibility of lower environmental impacts associated with shared laundries in comparison with private ownership (Nilsson
2011). By designing buildings with a shared laundry room, less floorspace is needed per apartment, which in practice could mean that less material is used per building or that a higher number of apartments per building are feasible.
This article aims to extend previous studies by expanding the analytical system boundary to include the building space itself. We believe that by doing so, a more honest comparison can be made between private and shared laundries for domestic laundry. The first research question for the study is therefore: to what extent do capital goods (i.e., whitegoods and the building itself) influence the emissions associated with domestic laundry, and how does it vary between private and shared laundry systems?
It is worth noting that shared laundries are common in many countries, especially in more densely populated areas. For example, shared laundries (e.g., communal laundry rooms within a multi-family building, or a commercial coin-operated facility) are often used in the Philippines (Retamal and Schandl
2018), Japan and Thailand (Moon
2020) and Finland (Miilunpalo and Raisanen
2019). A recent study by Laitala et al. (
2020) also found that the use of shared washing machines varied between 6 and 13% among consumers in China, Germany, Japan, UK, and the USA. For Sweden, shared laundries were introduced during the 1920s and have been the norm throughout the nation since the 1950s (Lund
2009). A major shift began in the early 1990s, and since then, most new multi-family buildings are equipped with private, in-unit washing machines, replacing the shared laundry rooms. This trend is also true for public housing in Sweden, which represent 46% of all Swedish rental apartments. However, since companies operating public housing have a stated mission to run the rental business in an environmental, economic and social sustainable way, this shift can be reversed by the public procurement process (Hall et al.
2016; Public Housing Sweden
2020). This paper is therefore intended as a contribution to a discussion about reversing laundry design norms in public housing in Sweden, in order to reduce emissions caused by domestic laundry.
In addition to investigating the influence of capital goods, this article aims to quantify and illustrate the potential tradeoff between wash temperature and detergent dose. This dynamic is important to understand because of the ongoing initiatives in Europe that make consumers wash at lower temperatures (Laitala et al.
2012). One such example is Procter & Gamble’s “
low-temperature laundry initiative” that recently developed into the ongoing international campaign “
I prefer 30” (Mylan
2017). Unfortunately, the effectiveness of the components in many of today’s detergents varies with temperature and lower wash temperatures can result in worse cleaning results. Consumers might thus be inclined to compensate the lower wash temperatures with higher amount of detergent, although it is unclear how this affects the overall emissions of a load of laundry. Therefore, the second research question for this paper is: how could net emissions potentially change in other EU countries on account of the tradeoff between temperature and detergent dose? Our main focus is on environmental impacts from Swedish domestic laundry. However, by also using data sources that are representative for European consumers, the results will indicate the possible magnitude of regional variations.
5 Conclusions
GHG emissions from private laundries in Sweden were estimated to be 190 g CO2 eq./kg laundry (washed and dried). If a shared laundry was used instead, the resulting emissions decreased by approximately 26%, mainly due to avoided emissions from capital goods. Because of this, it is evident that capital goods play a much bigger role for environmental impacts from laundry than previously thought. This is important not only for GHG emissions: capital goods were among the two largest contributors to emissions in more than 50% of all the impact categories. The finding is especially important for doing laundry using privately owned machines, where capital goods contributed approximately 38% of the estimated GHG emissions. As a comparison, in the shared systems, capital goods contributed approximately 11–16% to the estimated amount of GHG emissions. Looking at capital goods in more detail, the use of the building was at least as important as the machines themselves.
The above results make it possible to assess the changes in expected emissions from domestic laundry for newly built multi-family homes in Sweden since the shift in the 1990s. Had these apartment buildings been equipped with shared laundry rooms instead of privately owned machines, the estimated emissions from the laundry practices of the apartment dwellers would have been reduced by 26%.
Modeling the tradeoff between wash temperature and detergent dose also yielded interesting results. First, the most important variable in the model was the amount of detergent used per cleaning cycle (washing and drying), which was consistently being the most or second most important contributor to 75% all impact categories. Additionally, since the cleaning effectiveness of hot water and of some of the components in today’s detergent formulas varies with temperature, emissions from domestic laundering could for some consumers be reduced by washing at higher temperature but with less detergent. This pattern could be seen in Sweden within regions with hard water where the emissions from domestic laundry could be decreased by 6–12%. However, this result is foremost a consequence of the low GHG emissions associated with the electrical grid mix in Sweden. For many other European countries, such a change in behavior would currently instead lead to higher emissions from domestic laundry.
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