Most people today lean towards environmentally friendly lifestyle choices, but not at the expense of cleanliness. When it comes to our washing habits, the fear of being perceived as dirty often wins over the desire to act respecting the environment. And the more disgusted we are, the more we wash our clothes. This is demonstrated by a unique study from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, which examines the driving forces of our washing behaviors and provides new tools to reduce people’s environmental impact.
Today we wash our clothes more than ever and emissions from washing have never been higher. Some of the reasons are that we use each item of clothing a few times before throwing it in the laundry basket, technological advances have made it easier and cheaper to do laundry, and access to washing machines has increased. 16-35% of global microplastic emissions come from washing synthetic fibres. Furthermore, detergents contribute to eutrophication and the use of necessary energy and water also has an environmental impact.
“Even though machines have become more energy efficient, it’s the frequency with which we choose to wash that has the biggest impact on the climate, and we’ve never done as many washes as we do today. At the same time, most of us seem uninterested in changing our behavior to reduce our impact on the climate.”says Erik Klint, a doctoral candidate in the Division of Environmental Systems Analysis at Chalmers.
Klint has led research that takes a new and unexplored approach to our washing habits that takes into account a psychological perspective. The study focuses on two driving forces: environmental identity, that is, how strongly we identify with the group of environmentally conscious people and how prone we are to feelings of disgust. Two clearly contrasting driving forces, as the study shows.
“We humans are constantly faced with different conflicts of goals. In this case, there is a struggle between the desire to limit washing to save the environment and the fear of being perceived as a dirty person. Disgust is a strong psychological and social force. The study shows that the higher our sensitivity to disgust, the more we wash ourselves, regardless of whether we place high value on our environmental identity. The feeling of disgust simply wins over environmental awareness,” he claims.
The fact that disgust drives our behavior so strongly has several bases. Erik Klint describes it as an emotion conditioned by evolution, which serves to protect oneself from infections or dangerous substances. Furthermore, the feeling of disgust is closely linked to shame and can therefore also have an influence in social contexts.
“We humans don’t want to do things that risk calling into question our position in the group, such as being associated with a person who doesn’t take care of their hygiene”explains.
According to Erik Klint, the study highlights that today’s campaigns and messages to get people to act in an environmentally friendly way have the wrong starting point, as they often do not take into account the psychological aspects underlying people’s behaviour.
One of the study’s main suggestions is to encourage people to use clothes more often before they end up in the laundry basket. One way would be to highlight the economic arguments, given that clothes wear out when they go through the washing machine.
