What’s Going On Here?
A new wave of eco-fashion companies are now offering clothes that don’t need washing. From seaweed fibre T-shirts infused with peppermint oil to superfine wool that doesn’t trap sweat or moisture, these self-cleaning materials could be a gamechanger for addressing our society’s obsessive laundering habits.
What Does This Mean?
Yep, you heard right. Clothing brands such as Pangaia, Unbound Merino and Wool & Prince are now selling garms with ‘natural freshness’ and ‘odour resistance’ – so much so that you can forget about chucking them in the wash. Unbound Merino have created wool travel clothes that can go weeks without being washed and Wool & Prince are making dresses that can be worn for 100 days straight.
Okay maybe 100 days in the same outfit might make you trend-setters squirm, but these wash-less brands are helping to combat decades of clever marketing by the cleaning industry telling us that one day’s wear is enough to put in a load. But jeans don’t need washing for at least a year – right?
Why Should We Care?
Here’s a shocka for ya – only 5% of Germans changed their underwear daily in 1966! Some may say we’ve definitely come a long way in terms of personal hygiene, but laundering our clothes as much as we do now comes at a huge cost for our planet.
According to Fashion Revolution – a quarter of an item’s carbon footprint comes from washing. To top it off, each time you run a washing machine over 700,000 synthetic microfibres enter our already plastic filled oceans. Not to mention the gas, electricity and water usage – washing machines account for 17% of our home water usage!
Pangaia claim that with their seaweedy minty T-shirts save about 3,000 litres of water over the course of a lifetime, compared to a regular cotton tee. That’s enough water to fill 37 bathtubs!
Be Curious!
Whether you get on the hype and nab yourself a couple of washless items or not – keep it simple and rethink the way you launder! Shockingly 90% of the clothes we wash aren’t actually dirty enough to be washed, so we simply just need to wash our clothes less.
Our top tip; hang your clothes on your door for an au naturale air clean and they’ll be fresh as ever! And of course if you do pop a wash on, make sure you opt for a water efficient cool setting and ditch that tumble dryer!
For more laundry tips that won’t stain the environment, check out this treehugger article.
