Whether you’re looking to decrease your environmental footprint or want to preserve the quality of your delicates, here’s how to avoid excess water pollution, water waste and energy consumption.
1. Fill up your sink or a large bucket in your shower
We can limit our consumption of water to only what’s necessary. Fill your sink or a large bucket with lukewarm water. Opt for lukewarm because it’s more tolerable on our hands than cold.
2. Use an eco-friendly laundry soap
Pour in laundry detergent, mix and soak for an hour.
Rather than using toxic options most often found at the grocery store, choose a natural alternative. Avoid toxic chemicals that harm the environment, irritate the skin and can also eat away at fabrics. This includes artificial fragrances, colors and dyes, chlorine bleach, 1,4-Dioxane and nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs). Our go-to hand-washing detergent? For scent lovers, try Dedcool’s Detergent or The Laundress’ Signature Detergent.
3. Skip the softener
There’s no need to use extra chemicals on our clothes when we don’t need to. Our underwear is made from 100% organic pima cotton that gets softer with use.
4. Hang (or lay flat) to dry
Air drying uses less energy and also helps to preserve the quality of our clothing. Bonus, naturally whiten your white underwear when drying under direct sunlight.
If you are going to use the washer...
We recommend washing a full load (every time) and using the cold water cycle. Our underwear is made to withstand being tossed in with your other white clothing on the cold setting.
Stains happen
Make a concentrated mixture of table salt and water or paste of baking soda and water to get stains like blood out of your clothing.
Wastewater can threaten the environment
The wastewater from our washing machine can be full of toxic chemicals like phosphates, NPEs and brighteners. They don’t just irritate our skin but can be harmful to ourselves and the environment. By choosing a natural detergent, we can be more conscious of the ingredients we’re using to clean our clothes. Our recommendation for everyday compostable and super earth friendly seekers, try Nature First’s Laundry Pods.