Best Laundry Practices for a Clean & Healthy Environment | Tide (2024)

FAQs

Best Laundry Practices for a Clean & Healthy Environment | Tide? ›

Always use the correct dose of laundry detergent for the size and degree of contamination of your load. Avoid overloading your washing machine. Wash heavily contaminated items separately on the warmest wash setting allowed by the care label – ideally with a registered sanitizing or disinfecting additive.

Washing in cold water reduces your personal carbon footprint by 10% and is just as effective —most detergents today are formulated for cold washing. Air-drying your clothes helps reduce climate impact by 67%. Machine drying clothes accounts for 75% of laundry's total carbon footprint.

Sustainable Material Selection

Opt for organic fabrics, such as organic cotton, hemp, and bamboo, which are cultivated without harmful pesticides. Recycled materials, like polyester made from plastic bottles, also play a significant role in reducing waste and conserving resources.

So these are our green laundry tips for a more sustainable laundry : wash less, use colder water, eco-friendly detergents, line-dry clothes and consider energy-efficient washing machines & microfiber filters.

Use a gentle, nontoxic soap or detergent in every load of laundry and boost the cleaning power as needed by adding 1/2 cup of borax. This naturally occurring mineral has antiseptic, antibacterial, water-softening, and whitening properties.

Instead, try using white vinegar, non-chlorine oxygen bleach, or baking soda to brighten your clothes. With the latter, simply add 1/2 cup to the rinse cycle of your washing machine where it can brighten and deodorize your laundry. You can also dry your clothes in the sun, which is the safest, cheapest bleach around!

Use shorter cycles for less soiled and delicate clothing, and longer cycles for heavily soiled and bulky items. Always opt for the shortest possible cycle to get the job done; the less time garments spend being spun around in the wash, the longer they'll last.

What is a good laundry routine? ›

Instead of having a specific laundry day, do a little bit of laundry every day. Let's say you have two hours before bed after you get off work. Use that time to start a load of laundry. Throw it in the dryer before you go to bed, and you can fold it in the morning.

To avoid damaging other clothing, sort laundry according to color, separating lights from darks. Wash and dry heavier items, like towels, separately from lighter weight clothes to prevent damage to finer fabrics and to ensure even drying.

Phosphates, a common ingredient in many laundry products, can release into nearby rivers, lakes, and oceans and lead to algal blooms. These overgrowths of algae block out sunlight from reaching aquatic plants below the surface and cause oxygen levels to drop dramatically.

Eco-cycles use lower temperatures but wash your clothes for longer. This is more energy efficient because it takes less energy to keep the drum spinning than it does to heat water to higher temperatures.