an investigation of domestic laundry in europe - habits ... - SIFO

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12An investigation into the domestic laundry habits in Europeto check out the possible consequences based on an assumption that new textilesare more widely used among young people. Those textiles are very oftenlabelled with low washing temperatures (whether this is necessary or not) andwith advice to wash garments separately. This alone will most certainly leadto more frequent washing. Reinforcing this is the fact that amongst theyounger generation is it often part of the social code to appear clean and“newly washed”.DetergentsOne of the original ideas for the project was to investigate a possible influenceon the results of the content of the detergents. However, this idea had to beabandoned at an early stage due to lack of information. Even though that hasnot been part of these investigations, the fact still remains that the compositionof detergents is of vital influence.The results show that Spain has better results with traditional detergents(listed with the code “B” in this project) at 30°C for both hygiene and washingefficiency, when compared to the other types of detergent tested. Thegood hygiene effect of the Spanish laundering process appears to be due to thefact that the detergent foams more strongly than the other detergents. The explanationcould be that in some machines with foam detectors an extra rinse isautomatically added to reduce the foam. This extra rinse then adds more water.Additional investigations (see chapter 4) show that more rinse results insubstantially better laundry hygiene. This additional rinse is, however, not afull explanation for the better washing efficiency.Greece and Spain seem to have the detergents for white textiles with highestwash performance. Both countries are known to use traditional detergentsmost commonly. Greece has very good results in wash performance using thecompact detergent. The traditional detergent is more widely used but does nothave the same wash performance as the compact detergent. This contradictsthe pattern we see in Spain, where the results clearly demonstrate that the detergentsthat are most used also show the highest wash performance.The most common wash processes for white textiles in Spain and Norway(respectively) seem to have about the same average value on wash performanceeven though the Norwegian detergent is tested using a higher wash temperatureand lower water hardness. The Norwegian detergents seem to have alower wash performance than we would expect when tested under the mostcommon Norwegian conditions. This indicates that the Norwegian detergentis not properly adapted to the common Norwegian wash processes. Another
Summary 13possibility is that the dosage on the label is too low. We may conclude thatNorwegians consume much more energy than the Spanish to gain the samewash performance for their white textiles.All the liquid detergents we tested have a significantly lower wash performancethan the compact detergents tested. In fact, the wash performance whenusing water alone is similar to using the Spanish liquid detergent. The dosageused for the Spanish detergent is quite high, and this may have caused thevery bad results for this particular detergent. The poor results, combined withthe extremely high foam level during testing, may indicate that a differentprogramme with less mechanical action and less programme duration is morelikely to be used for this detergent in Spain. The liquid detergents from theother countries are significantly better than using just water, but in terms ofwash performance alone we would advise consumers to use other types ofdetergents. However, with regard to rinse performance, we find that the liquiddetergents have high rinse efficiency compared to the other types of detergents.This is valuable information for people with allergic reactions fromresidual detergent after wash.Temperature effects of the washing processThe investigations in this study indicate that the results from the washing performancetest at different temperatures do not seem to be as differentiated(specially between Norway and Greece) as was found in a previous investigationdone by the A.I.S.E [16].From the research results of the hygienic study, there are strong indicationsthat the hygiene quality of washed laundry when still wet is related to thewashing temperature and the presence of bleaching agents. A general observationis that the result of washing processes at low temperatures (15 and 30°C)shows a rather low hygienic quality. Hardly any reduction in numbers of micro-organismsis achieved. This is confirmed by an additional test. Almost allmicro-organisms were removed from the laundry samples by a 95°C programmeusing a detergent containing bleach.One of the most interesting findings is that washing at low temperaturesseems to spread micro-organisms among the different laundry items in awashing sample rather than removing them. Temperature and hardness of waterboth affect washing efficiency. Temperature alone is far more decisivethan hardness alone. Together there might be a reinforcement of effects, butthis must be analyzed further in order to reach a conclusive result.
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Appendix ASurvey of domestic laundr
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Appendix A 1199. Which temperature
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Appendix A 1211.Working, in private
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Appendix BDeclaration detergentsGre
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Appendix B 125NorwayA) Omo Ultra Ta
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Appendix CSettings of the 15°C Was
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Appendix DSettings of the 30°C Was
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