No matter which method you choose, there are some key tips for drying your clothes.
Firstly, if you’re buying a washing machine, and as we have said earlier try and find one with a good spin function. A good spin will remove more water more quickly and efficiently than drying, setting you up to get dry clothes faster.
Secondly, line drying outside has some strong benefits. Sunlight is naturally antibacterial with UV light killing off any bacteria that may survive the wash, including those that cause clothes to smell and those which might have a health impact. In addition, sunlight can gently bleach clothes too. If you’re looking to keep your whites white, hanging on a line can help with that.
Opt for an indoor drying rack too. Many of these fold up and store flat to save space while there are others are specifically designed to be space efficient. Placing a dehumidifier next to the rack when drying indoors will speed up the process and prevent the risk of damp and mold in the home. Dehumidifiers are electronical appliances that suck moisture out of indoor air, commonly used in areas of the home with high levels of humidity.
However, if you have to use a dryer, remember that the air used in tumble drying typically passes through a duct, or tube, and is vented directly outdoors. Researchers are working with manufacturers to develop and install a filter that can cut down on the release of plastic microfibres during this process.
In the meantime, households should try to dry polyester and other synthetic clothing on washing lines or indoor racks instead as these materials dry more easily than natural fibres like cotton and wool.
If you do have to dry synthetic garments, do them in small loads as the volume of microplastics released per garment increases with load size because the levels of friction between garments rises sharply the fuller the machine is.
The future for dryers
Kai Zhang, Kenneth Leung and colleagues from the American Chemical Society (ACS) in their research counted the microfibers generated by cotton and polyester clothing in a dryer to estimate the amount potentially being released into the outdoor air from a household’s laundry each year.
For both fabrics, the dryer released between 1.4 - 40 times more microscopic fragments than were generated by washing machines in previous studies for the same amount of clothing. They also found that the release of polyester microfibers increases with more clothes in the dryer, whereas the release of cotton microfibers remains constant regardless of the load size. The researchers suggest this occurs because some cotton microfibers aggregate and cannot stay airborne, a process that doesn’t happen for polyester.
To control the release of these airborne microfibers, additional filtration systems should be adapted for dryer vents and should be legislated. And then, the public will need to be educated on the best way to dispose of the contents of those filters otherwise the microfibers and more will end up back in the environment once more...
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