How to Do Laundry More Sustainably

Every load, regardless of temperature or machine efficiency, uses water, energy, and detergent, and sheds fiber. The single most effective way to reduce laundry's footprint is simply doing less of it: washing garments only when they need it extends a garment's life while directly cutting water, energy, and microfiber use. When you do wash, running full loads instead of small ones means fewer total cycles for the same amount of clothing, and, as a bonus, full loads shed roughly five times less microfiber than small, sparse ones.

Switching a load from hot to warm water cuts that load's energy use by about half, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, and washing below about 86°F (30°C) instead of 104°F (40°C) can save 50–65% of the energy a warmer wash would use. Modern enzyme-based detergents are built to work at these lower temperatures, so the old assumption that hot water is necessary to actually clean clothes mostly doesn't hold anymore. The one exception is oily or greasy stains, which do need warmth to break down — but common stains like grass, makeup, and blood should stay in cold water, since heat sets them permanently.

If you're due for a new machine, ENERGY STAR–certified washers use about 35% less water and 25% less energy than standard models.

Clothes dryers account for about 6% of total U.S. residential electricity use, and they're present in more than 80% of American homes, according to the EPA's ENERGY STAR program. Air-drying instead, even just for part of your laundry, adds up: a 2025 University of Michigan analysis estimated a household could save up to $2,100 over a dryer's lifetime and cut more than 3 tons of CO₂ by air-drying instead of machine-drying. If air-drying everything isn't practical, a heat-pump dryer uses roughly 70% less energy than a conventional electric dryer.

Laundry is a major source of ocean microplastic pollution — shed synthetic fibers are estimated to make up around 35% of primary microplastics entering the ocean, per peer-reviewed research. Cold water, shorter cycles, and full loads all reduce shedding, for the friction reasons above.

Beyond wash habits, product performance varies more than marketing suggests:

• The Guppyfriend washing bag captures around 39% of shed microfibers in peer-reviewed testing — meaningfully lower than the 86% figure sometimes quoted, which actually measures fiber breakage reduction, a different metric.
• The Cora Ball, an in-drum device, captures roughly 26–31%, the weakest option tested.
• External machine filters are strongest: the Lint LUV-R captured about 87% of shed fibers in the same study where the Cora Ball captured 26%, and real-world commercial filters generally capture 35–68%.
• France now requires new washing machines sold there to include microfiber capture, as of January 1, 2025 — the first national law of its kind. It's not yet enforceable in practice, though: the technical definition of a "compliant" filter has never been published.

Conventional liquid detergents send chemical ingredients, shed microfibers, and wastewater straight down the drain, per Consumer Reports testing. Alternatives aren't automatically better: CR found plastic-free laundry sheets, while lighter and less wasteful in packaging, generally clean worse than the lowest-performing traditional liquids and pods. Detergent pods raise a separate concern around the PVA film that dissolves them, whose biodegradability and microplastic impact is still being studied.

The most reliable shortcut is the EPA's Safer Choice label, which vets ingredients, prohibits phosphate builders, and requires surfactants that break down in the environment. It won't tell you how well a product cleans, but it does mean the formulation has been screened.