Chapter 8: Low-impact use

Changing the way in which people wash, dry and care for their garments can significantly influence the environmental impact of any item of clothing. Studies conducted almost 20 years ago revealed the relative importance of laundry behaviour on a garment’s overall sustainability profile. They showed that for frequently washed garments the impact of the so-called ‘use phase’ of a garment’s life is between two and four times that of production, even when measured across a wide range of criteria including carbon dioxide emissions, water pollution and production of solid waste.¹² Put simply, the way in which we care for our clothes has a big effect on their potential sustainability, and focusing design attention here brings the promise of change.

Yet while the cumulative impact of our clothes-care behaviours has been known for several decades, it is only much more recently, with the widespread acceptance of life-cycle thinking, that responsibility for what happens in the laundry has begun to be shouldered by designers and fashion brands and not just those of us who actually do the clothes cleaning. In life-cycle thinking, the aim is to improve the sustainability credentials of the entire product, as it is made, used and then discarded. This holistic approach has spawned a number of initiatives aimed at reducing resource-intensive laundry behaviours as a way to improve the sustainability of the overall garment. One such programme, the British government’s ‘Sustainable Clothing Roadmap’,¹³ has funded specific research into laundry technologies and associated policy strategies as a way explicitly to promote enhanced sustainability of clothing.

Consumer behaviour and low-impact use

Like almost all sustainability issues in fashion, those relating to laundering are nuanced and complex; there are few one-size-fits-all solutions to the challenges faced. Perhaps the most obvious caveat is that not all garments – and not all consumers – are the same. Some garment types (underwear and T-shirts, say) are washed intensively, while others (jackets and sweaters) are rarely cleaned. For infrequently laundered items, making changes to how they are cared for is a red herring, as it will have almost no effect on their overall sustainability. Similarly, there are wide-ranging differences in the way individuals conduct their laundry practices: some carefully sort and separate their laundry, doing a part-load as they need an item; others wash everything at the same temperature in full loads; others still use public launderettes, which wash and tumble-dry clothes in large commercial machines. Thus any approach to addressing impacts in laundering needs to be both specific and personal while at the same time able to bridge the subtleties of socio-cultural attitudes and consumer behaviour, in addition to addressing the more straightforward resource-efficiency considerations. Ultimately, the objective is to encourage more sustainable attitudes towards cleanliness and hygiene and help to modify current norms.

Design for low launder

Perhaps the most obvious place to begin to make changes to reduce the impact associated with laundering clothes is to work with fibres’ innate washing and drying characteristics and, for example, to specify those materials that wash well in cool temperatures and dry quickly, leading to benefits including lower energy consumption in the laundry (discussed on page 61). Yet it is not just fibre type that influences laundry behaviour; fabric construction and finishing can also lead to lower-impact washing. Novel self-cleaning coatings based on nanotechnology are currently in development. Perhaps the most well-known finishes applied to fabric to influence laundering habits are stain-repellent coatings, such as Scotchgard^™ and Teflon®, that resist dirt; or antimicrobial finishes, from triclosan to quaternized silicones and silver, that help keep fabrics ‘fresher’ for longer. Both these groups of finishes bring the promise of lower impacts in laundering – that is, if their application actually translates into different laundering behaviour, which is far from guaranteed. What is certain, however, is that every additional finishing treatment necessitates a supplementary industrial process and brings an added environmental cost that has to be traded off against speculative laundry benefits over the long term.

Implications of coatings

A growing body of evidence now demonstrates wide-ranging human health impacts associated with perfluorinated chemicals – the base products of stain-repellent coatings. A recent study found evidence linking exposure to perfluorinates with low birth weights in children,¹⁴ and they are now included on the ‘SIN’ (Substitute It Now) list developed by European NGOs. This list identifies 267 substances as being of very high concern, and NGOs are calling for authorities to regulate and eliminate these from products.¹⁵ For antimicrobial coatings, concerns are on-going about bacteria becoming drug-resistant (sometimes called ‘super-bugs’) on account of their continual exposure to bacteria-killing substances including coatings. There are also worries about the wash-fastness of these chemicals and their presence in downstream watercourses.

When immersed in the detail of the effects of a coating’s chemistry, it is easy to lose sight of whether such additional finishing treatments deliver actual benefits. Currently evidence proving that their application results in less frequent laundering is lacking, for ‘coatings only directly influence physical factors of laundering, not cultural or behavioural ones… (and) it is cultural or behavioural reasons that account for most of our laundry’.¹⁶ Furthermore, a serious debate about the necessity (or not) of making our clothes free of bacteria in the first place is long overdue. While it makes sense for medical textiles such as dressings or swabs to be sterile to reduce the risk of infection, sterile garments are, for the majority of us with healthy immune systems, far from essential to our well-being.

New solutions for low launder

Japanese brand Konaka, together with designer Kansai Yamamoto and Savile Row tailor John Pearse, has developed a ‘Shower Clean Suit’ that can be washed in a warm shower stream and dries wrinkle-free. The suit is made from a novel blend of wool and water-soluble fibres and soaked in water after construction, so that the water-soluble fibres dissolve, creating a fabric that is made of wool and an array of hollow cavities. This allows water to pass easily between the fibres, taking dirt along with it. The benefits of an easy-care suit washed in the shower are obvious: no dry-cleaning and associated solvent use; no use of white goods and detergents; and perhaps, in the case of Konaka’s suit, the need to own fewer suits because the cleaning process is so quick. According to Konaka, it takes around ten minutes to rinse the suit to remove normal stains and it drip-dries wrinkle-free in eight hours. Konaka’s innovation is marketed as part of the convenience culture and raises additional questions – such as, when a suit is easier to clean, will we simply wash it more often? And by freshening up a garment in a shower cubicle – in the same way we would our bodies – do our more general expectations of cleanliness around clothing rise even further, leading to more laundering overall?

No Wash

Perhaps the logical conclusion of any attempt to innovate to reduce the high impact of clothes washing is to design clothes never to be washed at all. By a single stroke, around two-thirds of the total energy consumed in the life of a standard, frequently washed garment could be saved. Persuading people to defy social pressure and adopt non-laundering behaviour with their clothes may not be as challenging as we think: for a small number of people, this is already established behaviour. Recent research gathered stories and images about, among other things, clothes that are still in use and have never been washed.¹⁷ These collated tales reveal that a key influence in determining whether a piece might never be laundered is fear that the washing process itself causes something precious to be lost: a scent, a memory, the particular way a garment fits, the quality of hand-work, and so on. This evocation of emotion as a major influence in home laundering practices stands at odds with leading industry approaches, which treat laundering as a technical and behavioural function of wash-cycle efficiency but not an emotional one.

Social norms and hygiene

As fashion historian Melissa Leventon notes: ‘We are currently in a period where we are clean and perfumed. But there have been periods where we have been clean and unperfumed, unclean and perfumed, and unclean and unperfumed. Each period reflected the social and cultural mores of the time.’¹⁸ The scope and potential of design to use historical knowledge as a cue to influence social and cultural behaviours is well known; but perhaps its key starting point today, in a time of peak oil and scarce water, is to design pieces that encourage individuals to reflect on their current behaviour and offer visions of a future very different from the present, with the aim of fostering change towards sustainability. To a certain extent, the way in which denim is often worn in so as to allow authentic wear-marks to accumulate in a pair of jeans offers a small insight into a set of already existing alternative behaviours that consume few resources; it takes between four and nine months to wear in a pair of jeans in this way and requires that laundering is delayed a minimum of six months.

The No Wash top, designed in 2002–3 by Becky Earley and Kate Fletcher as part of the 5 Ways project, was developed in response to a laundry diary documenting six months of laundry behaviour and life-cycle data that indicated the high relative impact of the consumer-care phase of the life cycle. The garment features wipe-clean surfaces in areas where stains are most likely to accumulate and extra underarm ventilation; it has been worn regularly for several years without washing.

Also based on research rooted in user behaviour and cultural rituals, Energy Water Fashion has explored how design can influence the way garments are worn and used. Exhibited as part of London College of Fashion’s MA Fashion and the Environment showcase in early 2010, each item in its eight-piece collection EW8 incorporates a unique design feature, identified through empirical work, to encourage the wearer to wash the garment less often. The features, which include colour, fibre type, fit, design, openings, use of protective layers, and function, offer creative starting points to influence both design practice and the way users care for their clothes, bringing knowledge of the practices of use to bear on the design and development of garments.

Design to stain

A variant on the no-wash theme is to use the inevitable accumulation of stains on a garment over time as a key part of its design, in effect as a sign of its loving use. Here space is left in a garment’s print or cut to record and celebrate marks of use: something that goes against our usual tactic of erasing all evidence of wear, washing out past stains and spills. Leaving such a space for the user and his or her touch links garment aesthetics to social norms and changes the role that the designer plays, away from producing complete inviolable pieces towards producing items that are finished only in collaboration with the wearer over time. The intention here is that the wearer instantly recognizes that this garment is to be treated differently. Lauren Devenney’s No Stain dress (over the page), for example, presents a new perspective on the faux pas of dirty clothing, with pieces designed to resist smell and encourage stain. Using linen and cotton jersey to allow the body and garments to breathe, and billowy silhouettes with deeply cut arms and neckline for additional circulation, the potential for perspiration and body odour is significantly reduced. Pre-stained in a semi-random splatter pattern, the items are refreshed, rather than degraded, by each further accidental spill.

Low iron

Statistics show that when we steam-iron a garment on a hot setting, we use the same amount of energy as is consumed during washing (though it is much lower when we iron without steam).¹⁹ Though it is easy to imagine eliminating the ironing process altogether, especially for those among us who are already iron-shy, this strategy has multifaceted implications, not least for social norms and the cultural acceptability of wearing wrinkled garments.

Ironing smoothes crumpled or creased fabric and, like washing, gives an appearance of smartness, care and freshness, all of which are triggers for social messages such as success and respect. For centuries, ironing has been a key part of the laundering cycle, particularly for natural fibres such as linen, cotton and silk that crease readily. However, with the introduction of more crease-resistant synthetic fibres after World War II and growing consumer demand for convenient, easy-care fabrics, finishing treatments to increase crease-resistance for natural fibres were developed – effectively doing away with, or at least minimizing, the need for ironing. The trade-off here is whether energy-intensive ironing at home and taking time and care over a garment (which arguably connect you more with a piece) are better than increased chemical use in the industrial finishing process. Or whether both approaches can be eclipsed by other, more resource-efficient solutions – perhaps by working with ideas of social and cultural change or quite simply by designing to be creased.

Design for wrinkles

Designing for creasing and wrinkles presents an opportunity both to meet a sustainability goal and to benefit the wearer, for in our modern and fast-paced lives, acceptable creases have the appeal of convenience. Muji’s creased and wrinkled T-shirt, for example, completely eliminates the need to iron. Packaged as a shrink-wrapped cube, the product clearly communicates the design intent at point of sale, while the blended cotton–polyester fabric retains creases through use. Printing on deliberately wrinkled cloth to create breaks in the transferred image and trompe-l’oeil effects of wrinkle stripes printed on flat fabric are treatments that have already been explored and marketed successfully on conventional garments. Such effects distract the eye away from unintentional creases, much in the way that a space-dyed yarn, once knitted, distracts the eye from irregular colour fading. These visual manipulations lend themselves well to the designer’s mind- and skill-set and when applied to sustainability issues provide an infinite number of possible solutions. A more sculptural approach to design to be creased could entail structural details such as drawstrings and gathers specifically placed to create volume and wrinkles in creatively acceptable ways, while the wrinkled version of Issey Miyake’s Pleats Please concept provides the opposite effect – constricting rather than building volume – for the same purpose. What all of these ideas have in common is that they make creases and wrinkles acceptable, even chic and desirable, and therefore hold promise for being accepted by the mainstream.