It is not a very well known fact, but most of the environmental impacts involved with textiles and clothing actually happens during the washing, drying and ironing stage, when we are living with textiles and caring for them.
Most focus is often placed on the production stage of textiles, whether its the pesticides involved with cotton production, or the water and energy usage during the weaving, spinning and finishing stages. But the cleaning and drying of our clothes and textiles needs to be re-considered, and requires some 'joined up thinking' by machine manufacturers, clothing designers and even psychologists.
There have been some recent campaigns such as Marks & Spencer's 'Wash at 30' campaign, which are helping to shift our domestic behaviors. But more needs to be done and the next focus by government and industry is apparently going to be on encouraging people to use line drying more, rather than tumble dryers.
How can we make line drying a cool thing to do?
I'm a big fan of line drying and have never used a tumble dryer. It helps that I love all the accessories involved in line drying like pegs and washing baskets - in Australia where I grew up, you even get a trolley on wheels which your washing basket slots into, so you can wheel it down to the clothes line at the bottom of the garden. Of course, in Australia, there is a trusty round clothes line in the back of every garden. But how do you encourage people to line dry in the UK, where the weather is not ideal, and not every one has accesss to outdoor space?
At a recent Defra event on the environmental impacts of clothes cleaning, we workshopped some ideas. One idea would be that we need to redesign indoor clothes racks. Like those Victorian pulley-system ones that you secure to the ceiling to save space. But someone needs to also offer some sleek and groovy ones, for other types of taste. It would also help to start to build in spaces in new homes for indoor line drying.
The main point I took away from the event was that trying to encourage sustainable clothes cleaning practices is all about behaviour change, and as I said above, will involve the collaborative know-how of the many different players involved.