The heating up of washing water is one of the biggest electricity-consumers in the household. Thus it makes perfect sense to develop a detergent, which is able to wash clothes at a lower temperature.
Not only because of the money saved, due to the lowered electricity bill, but also because of the environmental gain.
Lowering CO2 emission
When washing at half the normal temperature, the electricity consumption is reduced by 60 percent. Hence the consumer can save money every time the washing machine is started – and at the same time the outlet of CO2 is reduced. Dr Per H. Nielsen, “Life cycle assessment” expert in Novozymes, has made calculations on this in a European scale: “If all households in Europe were to wash approximately three 40°C washes per week and lowered the washing temperature to 30°C, it would result in a reduction in CO2 emissions by almost three million tons per year. Comparatively speaking, this is more than the CO2 emission from one million cars during an entire year!”
Rethinking washing is the name of the game
Thanks to the right combination of bleach, builders, surfactants as well as enzymes from Novozymes, a cold-wash detergent that makes it possible to clean clothes at half the normal degrees has already been developed. The response to this has been great and market research shows that 70% of the Danish consumers are willing to switch to a cold-water detergent if it proves as efficient as traditional washing powder. Accordingly, there is a great opportunity here, for the manufacturers to develop new environmentally friendly products that meet the “green” trend on the market. At Novozymes we are more than ready to help manufacturers going in this direction. Not just because we know that the consumers can save a lot of money on this while the manufacturers can raise their profits, but also because we know that every time we are shipping one kilo of enzymes, there is a net reduction of 100 kilos of CO2.