7 easy tips: How to save the environment when doing laundry

Almost half of a garment’s environmental footprint is generated in the home

At Ecouture, we have taken 60 per cent of the responsibility for ensuring that our clothing’s environmental footprint is as small as possible. Several studies show that the remaining 40% is down to you. That’s why we’ve put together seven tips for washing your clothes that will help you significantly reduce their environmental footprint whilst also extending their lifespan.

1. Wash less!

We’re all familiar with this everyday scene: Clothes are strewn across the floor. Clothes are picked up from the floor. Clothes are thrown into the laundry basket – but hang on! Did those clothes end up in the right place? Most likely not.

Many of us have the bad habit of throwing clothes in the wash that are neither dirty nor smelly. The vast majority of clothes can be worn many times before they actually need to be washed. Clothes like skirts and pants can even be worn many times before they start to smell or get too many stubborn stains. And hey, less laundry! - It's a win-win situation.

2. Air your clothes

A good alternative to washing clothes is to air them instead. Usually a few hours outside for airing can remove the odor from the clothes. If your clothes are made of wool, you can avoid washing them altogether and just air them if you've avoided getting them too dirty. Conveniently, cold and frost are the best deodorizers for wool clothes.

3. Use arm pads

Our foremothers sewed sleeve gussets into their blouses and dresses so that they could wash the sleeve gussets separately from the rest of the garment. In this way, they managed to wash their clothes less often and keep them looking good for longer. It’s a brilliant idea and a tradition that we at Ecouture think is worth reviving. That’s why you can buy white and black sleeve inserts (with matching press studs) from our online shop – order them here.

4. Remove the stains yourself

It goes without saying that it isn’t necessary. Yet many of us still put clothes in the wash or send them to the dry cleaner’s simply because they’ve got a stain or two on them. But the vast majority of stains can actually be dealt with by spot-cleaning with a little water. Dry cleaning is a harsh process for both your clothes and the environment, so send your clothes for dry cleaning as rarely as possible.

But it can be tricky to remove if you get stains on your clothes. Be careful not to rub too hard in the same spot on dry fabric. This can sometimes cause you to remove some excess dye, leaving a lighter patch on the garment. At Ecouture, no harsh chemicals are used to set the colour, so you’ll often find excess dye coming out in the wash. If you need to remove a stain, the whole dress must be washed. This is because the entire fabric needs to be wet to prevent new discolouration. During the process, gently rub hand soap or brown soap into the soiled area. If necessary, leave the wet fabric to soak overnight in a plastic bag so that it does not dry out. However, this is best if the fabric is more or less a solid colour, so that the colours do not bleed onto one another.

5. Wash at 30°C and preferably 20°C

A regular wash of dresses, T-shirts, blouses, pants and clothes you would normally wash at 30-40°C can easily be washed at 20 degrees! However, this requires that you wash by hand or have a machine that can wash at 20°C and that you wash it with cold water washing powder, which has special enzymes added to it. You can find cold water detergent in most supermarkets. Irma, for example, has a cold water detergent that carries the Nordic Ecolabel.

If the clothes are very dirty, 30°C can usually do the job. 40°C is a no-go for regular laundry.

If you want to take care of your Ecouture dresses, hand wash them gently at 20° - 30° and don't soak them as it can cause discoloration if it has multiple colors. Let the garment drip dry. If you don't twist it so that it's very wet when you hang it up - straighten it a little. And hanging clothes outside, the wind can sometimes help to "iron" them. However, if you wash in the machine - with a spin cycle - what we call "ironing penalty" occurs because clothes get very wrinkled in the spin cycle.

6. Use eco-friendly detergent and dose correctly

There is a wide range of environmentally friendly detergents on the market. If your local supermarket doesn't stock it, there are a number of online stores that can send it to you. For example, try EcoEgo.dk

And whilst we’re on the subject of washing powder, it seems we’re also a bit too careless when it comes to measuring it out for the washing machine. Using too much washing powder leaves soap residue on your clothes and is quite simply a waste of money and an unnecessary burden on the environment. There are dosage instructions on all washing powders, so all it takes is for you to read the instructions and check the water hardness where you live. You can find a water hardness map of Denmark here. For those of you living in the City of Copenhagen, we can reveal that the water hardness is 18–24 dH = hard (yes, we hadn’t checked it ourselves either – until now).

7. Ditch the dryer

We all know it, and we've known it for years. No, hanging socks and underwear to dry is no fun, but it only takes 5 minutes. So that machine just needs to go. Period.

We hope you’ll take our advice on board, if you haven’t already, so that together we can reduce the environmental footprint of our clothes. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but we’re in a bit of a hurry.

Kind regards, Team Ecouture and Johanne Helger Lund