Changing laundry habits in Norway

Maintenance is often the most energy-demanding stage during clothes' life cycle. Therefore, a shift towards more sustainable washing habits has great potential to reduce the consumption of energy, water and detergent. This paper discusses the change in laundering practices during the past 10 years in Norway and suggests strategies to help consumers change their laundry habits to more sustainable ones. Quantitative information of consumers' experiences, habits and opinions concerning clothing maintenance was collected through three surveys in Norway in 2002, 2010 and 2011. The 2010 study was supplemented with qualitative in-depth interviews of a strategic sample of households. The average washing temperature has decreased slightly during the studied time periods. Some products' washing frequencies remained the same, whereas other products such as jeans were used a few more days before washing. The cotton programme is the most used washing programme, but short programmes are gaining popularity. The laundry sorting processes vary greatly and are influenced by several factors such as washing temperature, colours, fibre type and use area. For some consumers, the use of several different sorting categories made it more difficult to collect a sufficient amount of clothing to fill the machine. They were also afraid that overfilling the machine would result in clothes that were not clean enough or had detergent residues. Detergent dosing practices are far from optimal. In 2010, although the majority of respondents only used eye measure and did not know the water hardness of their area, they still tried to vary detergent dosage based on the amount of laundry and the level of soiling. Different design for sustainable behaviour strategies could be used within detergent dosage systems, care labelling, machine programme selection ( such as suggesting lower temperature and eco-programme), machine filling grade indicators, storage systems for slightly used clothing and textile material choice.