Ecover: What, why, how we launder

Ecover advertisement
Out of home billboard showing Ecover advertising campaign
Image: Jozef Devloo – Ecover
newspaper advert for ecover featuring clothes label with humourous instructions to prolong use of clothes without laundering
Image: Duncan Clark – Uncommon

Working with colleagues at Falmouth University I just finished up a research report for eco-detergent brand Ecover.

Ecover wanted to shift the cultural conversation around laundry, to show how fewer washes reduces microplastics and other sources of water pollution, as well as, reducing water and energy usage.

To do this Ecover asked us research and develop key insights on cultural history of cleanliness, evolution of detergent advertising since 1950’s, and other factors that influence how we launder.

For the report I designed a UK public survey and analysed existing qualitative research to understand everyday laundry habits. Some of our key insights were:

Power of social conventions
Building on Shove (2003) we identified the power of social norms around cleanliness and washing on people’s everyday laundry habits. We suggested that starting a cultural conversation to uncover and debate these unwritten rules could be a starting point for tackling over washing of clothes and related environmental impacts (Jack, 2013; Sahakian et al., 2021)

Not everyone connects laundry with eco impacts
We do not always make the connection between our everyday laundry washing routines and associated resource impacts. Jack (2013) talks about laundry as inconspicous consumption i.e. a prime example of an everyday habit that hides an environmentally taxing practice. Therefore, to reduce the environmental impact of laundering, it may be better to target the preceding decisions that slowly generate the need to wash, rather than the act of running the washing machine ​(Klint, Peters, & Johanson, 2024)​.

To shift laundry habits we needs to think beyond machines and detergents
A study by Mylan and Southerton ​(2018)​ showed how laundry is strongly interconnected with social roles, layout / materials of the home, and external activities like paid and unpaid work times, school timetables and routinised leisure activities. The study findings suggest that to reduce the eco impact of laundry, we need to move beyond laundry products and washing machines, to consider how these broader contextual factors offer barriers and opportunities for behaviour change.

  

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