Hello again! My posting day has finally come. I want to share with all of you what I have been doing since the beginning of this school year. While I was growing up I would wear my clothes more than once and then I would put them in the laundry to be washed. I never had to do my own laundry until I arrived at college. I knew how to do it, but I was just extremely busy with sports, academics, and other activities. Arriving at college I realized that sharing washers and dryers with over two hundred people is more burdensome than one would think. My dorm does provide six washers and six dryers, but it’s always a battle to get a washer and dryer. Within my first two weeks of college I went down on Saturday morning to wash some clothes and get the task out of the way, and have fresh clothes for the next week. I was surprised when I arrived to find every washer and dryer being used and four people already in the laundry room waiting for washers and dryers to become available. I thought that since it was Saturday people had the same idea. When I heard one of my hall mates say that he wears six different outfits a day, and had to laundry every week I was amazed at how much electrical energy and water he was using a week. Now I’m not saying do not do your laundry, but learn when things should and should not be put in the laundry basket. If I wear a shirt one day and after the day goes by, I take it off, look at it, smell it, and then put it aside if it is okay for me to wear again. If vice versa than I put it in my laundry basket for laundry. However, I do have a lot of clothing, thus I only have to do laundry maybe twice or maybe three times a month. I decided to do some research on the washing and drying machines in the dorms. I found that the washing machines in the dorms are front loading washers and dryers. The front-loading washers “..the clothes do not sit in a tub of water. Rather they tumble through a layer of water as the drum rotates. This allows for a tremendous reduction (60% less) of the water required”. Also, the “front load washers cut water use by nearly 40 percent. A typical top-loading washer uses about 40 gallons of water for each full load”. Using a front-loading washer “…you could save as much as 7,000 gallons of water per year”. On top of that if you follow what I have been doing with my laundry you could double or triple that number. Having clean water is something extremely valuable. Not every community around the world has fresh water. With this type of water conservation more water could be supplied to other countries or areas in desperate need of clean drinking water.
-T
Works Cited
"Clothes Washers - Energy Choices at the Home." Consumer Energy Center - Information for the Consumer about Saving Energy from the California Energy Commission. Web. 07 Apr. 2011. <http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/home/appliances/washers. html>.
"Front Loading Washing Machine Facts." Tidbits & Stuff. Web. 07 Apr. 2011. <http://www.tidbitsandstuff.com/household-tips/laundry/139-front-loading-washing-machine-facts/>.
this is a TERRIFIC post!!! laundry is such an every day thing and we forget about it. Many folks around the world get to do laundry in a bucket in a river. Dryers are HUGE energy users.. wouldn't it be cool if Elon could have clothes lines?
ReplyDeleteI definitely think that people do laundry way too often. I do mine about once a month and try not to go through clothes too quickly. Another thing I see a lot is that when people are doing laundry, the washers and dryers are not even full. People put in only a few shirts into a whole washing machine. It is not energy or cost efficient. I'm not saying i'm perfect, because I definitely am not but I think that you should at least fill the washers and dryers to their capacity, especially when there are only a few of them in each dorm. Sometimes I just dry clothes for 20 or so minutes and let them air dry for the rest of the time. Then I don't have to waste 20 more minutes to get things completely dry.
ReplyDelete- EL