Are all these environmental issues a money making con?
Reducing energy and water consumption in appliances is a genuine consumer benefit – lower running costs and less environmental impact are both real. The legitimate question is whether some eco improvements have come at a cost to actual performance, and whether consumers are being pressured to scrap working machines based on running cost claims that may not fully account for manufacturing impact and reduced product longevity.
Environmental performance has become a core marketing tool for appliance manufacturers over the past two decades. Energy ratings, water consumption figures, and eco programme options now feature prominently in all appliance advertising. Understanding what these claims actually mean – and what trade-offs may be involved – helps consumers make better purchasing decisions.
Where Eco Improvements Are Genuine
Modern washing machines genuinely use less energy and water than machines from 20 or 30 years ago. This delivers real, measurable benefits – lower electricity and water bills over the life of the appliance. The improvements are not simply marketing claims.
Real eco improvements in modern appliances
- Significantly lower water consumption per cycle compared to older machines
- Better motor efficiency – inverter motors in particular reduce energy use and improve reliability
- Improved thermal insulation reducing heat loss during wash cycles
- More sophisticated programme control making better use of the heat already generated
Where the Trade-Offs Are Less Obvious
The push to reduce water consumption has had consequences for wash and rinse performance that are not reflected in energy label ratings. Modern machines use so little water that some struggle to rinse detergent out of laundry effectively – particularly on shorter cycles or with heavily loaded drums. This is not a fault; it is a design consequence of aggressive water use reduction.
Performance trade-offs from reduced water use
- Poor rinsing in some cycles – detergent residue left in laundry – see our guide on why modern washing machines rinse poorly
- Eco programmes that achieve their energy rating under laboratory test conditions that may not reflect real-world use
- Energy label ratings based on specific test cycles that are not representative of how most people actually use their machines – see our guides on misleading eco labels and what the energy consumption figures actually mean
The Appliance Replacement Question
Campaigns encouraging consumers to replace working older appliances with newer, more efficient models are regularly promoted by manufacturer industry bodies. The argument is that the running cost savings of a new machine will offset the purchase price over time.
This argument has genuine merit in some cases – a 25-year-old machine using significantly more electricity and water than a current model may well be worth replacing on running cost grounds. But the calculation is often presented without accounting for the full manufacturing impact of producing a new appliance, or for the fact that a new mid-range machine may not last as long as the older machine it replaces.
The full lifecycle environmental cost of an appliance includes its manufacture, not just its energy use during operation. Replacing a working 10-year-old machine with a new one to achieve marginal running cost savings does not necessarily represent a net environmental improvement when manufacturing impact is included. The most environmentally sound approach is generally to keep a working appliance maintained and running for as long as practically possible – see our guide on how long a washing machine should last.
The Practical Consumer Position
The practical conclusion for most consumers is straightforward: energy and water savings are real and worth having. Eco programmes on modern machines can reduce running costs meaningfully. But consumers should read energy labels critically – not all programme types are as efficient in practice as in test conditions – and should not feel pressured to scrap a working machine based on running cost claims that may be overstated. See our guides on what energy labels on washing machines actually mean and our broader series on whether we really need to replace old appliances.
Related Guides
Related Guides
Are Eco Labels on Washing Machines Misleading?How energy and water ratings are measured – and why real-world performance may differ from the label.
Why Do Modern Washing Machines Rinse Poorly?How reduced water use affects rinse quality – and what can be done about it.
How Long Should a Washing Machine Last?Expected lifespan by price tier – and why longevity matters more than energy ratings when calculating whole-life cost.
Should We Replace Old Appliances to Save Energy?A closer look at the running cost vs replacement cost calculation – and whether the numbers always add up.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are energy-efficient washing machines actually better?
For running costs, yes – modern machines use meaningfully less electricity and water than older models, which translates to lower bills over time. For actual wash and rinse performance, the picture is more mixed. Some modern machines – particularly those optimised for the lowest possible water use – rinse less effectively than older higher-water-use designs. The energy label does not measure rinse quality.
Should I replace my old washing machine with a newer, more efficient one?
This depends on the age and condition of the current machine, its actual energy use compared to modern equivalents, and how long a new machine is likely to last. The running cost savings from a new machine need to be weighed against the purchase price and the manufacturing impact of replacing a working appliance. A well-maintained machine that is still working well may not be worth replacing purely on efficiency grounds until it reaches the end of its practical service life.
Are eco programmes on washing machines worth using?
They can reduce energy and water use significantly, but they typically run for much longer than standard programmes and may not achieve the same wash temperature, which can affect results on heavily soiled loads. For lightly soiled everyday laundry, eco programmes are a practical choice. For heavier soiling or hygiene washing, a standard programme at an appropriate temperature is generally more effective.
7 Comments
Grouped into 5 comment threads.
2 replies My comment on the other article is quite interesting. DO WE REALLY NEED TO DUMP OUR OLD APPLIANCES TO SAVE THE WORLD? That shows my views on people like AMDEA.
0 replies I've just embedded a 5 minute YouTube video to the bottom of my original article above entitled, Global Warming - Al Gore sued by 30,000 Scientists
I’ve just embedded a 5 minute YouTube video to the bottom of my original article above entitled, Global Warming – Al Gore sued by 30,000 Scientists
0 replies Oh, quite right about low temperature washing being disgusting, Dave. I have washed on 40 in the past and was not happy with the results, towels are not clean and fresh. So it is 60oC all the way. I always have "Higher Water Level" selected and "Short wash" where appropriate. I always use Persil Biological powder (not the colour stuff, the proper job with bleach in), or Ariel as a second best if the shop havn't got any Persil. Whites-Cotton 60oC. Coloureds-Cotton 60oC. Overalls/Work stuff-Cotton 60oC. Bedding-Whites Economy 60oC. (Good at removing skin lotions, and the Bosch has "Whites Economy" too Dave, its 60oC on mine though, not 70oC like it was on the Hoover). The only time I wash on less is when I wash my Hi-Vis work jacket on Synthetic 40/50oC, I select "Pre-wash" if needed as well. The stupid thing is not supposed to be washed above 40oC and it attracts muck and only people in dirty jobs wear them as well, stupid ain't it?!! I even wash my best clothes on 60 as well, and contry to popular belief they are not ruined but spotless and my suit trousers are at least 10 years old. My machine is spotless and Andy has said a maintainence wash once or twice a year is sufficient. So it is better to wash at high temperature so the machine does not get rotted away inside from the slimey mass. Washing at 30/40 is only saving in the short term, it could put your machine in land fill many years too soon (as people do not repair anymore) and a monthly 90/95 will cost as well, not to mention wear and tear from 12 washes per year with nothing in the machine. So it would seem counter productive to wash at low temperatures, I could be wrong though, perhaps I'm a mucky beggar!! Oliver.
Oh, quite right about low temperature washing being disgusting, Dave.
I have washed on 40 in the past and was not happy with the results, towels are not clean and fresh. So it is 60oC all the way. I always have “Higher Water Level” selected and “Short wash” where appropriate. I always use Persil Biological powder (not the colour stuff, the proper job with bleach in), or Ariel as a second best if the shop havn’t got any Persil.
Whites-Cotton 60oC.
Coloureds-Cotton 60oC.
Overalls/Work stuff-Cotton 60oC.
Bedding-Whites Economy 60oC. (Good at removing skin lotions, and the Bosch has “Whites Economy” too Dave, its 60oC on mine though, not 70oC like it was on the Hoover).
The only time I wash on less is when I wash my Hi-Vis work jacket on Synthetic 40/50oC, I select “Pre-wash” if needed as well. The stupid thing is not supposed to be washed above 40oC and it attracts muck and only people in dirty jobs wear them as well, stupid ain’t it?!!
I even wash my best clothes on 60 as well, and contry to popular belief they are not ruined but spotless and my suit trousers are at least 10 years old.
My machine is spotless and Andy has said a maintainence wash once or twice a year is sufficient. So it is better to wash at high temperature so the machine does not get rotted away inside from the slimey mass.
Washing at 30/40 is only saving in the short term, it could put your machine in land fill many years too soon (as people do not repair anymore) and a monthly 90/95 will cost as well, not to mention wear and tear from 12 washes per year with nothing in the machine. So it would seem counter productive to wash at low temperatures, I could be wrong though, perhaps I’m a mucky beggar!!
Oliver.
0 replies I'm a dyed-in-the-wool believer in Global Warming and in being environmentally friendly, however I'm afraid I am finding that with every passing day yet another fatal flaw is being exposed in all the environmentally friendly schemes that we, the end-users, are being asked (and in many cases forced) to engage in. Washing machines now use cold water to fill with and low water levels. This means that, amongst other things, laundry is not washed properly (there is extensive debate about this on other boards on this site but for now please accept that I have proved this to be the case in my own washing machine and at least 2 test organizations that I have heard in programmes on BBC Radio 4 have concluded the same), laundry is not rinsed properly (this is widely accepted and seems to be the cause of little or no controversy) and machines break down more regularly because of the extra wear and tear on parts from longer washes to try to compensate for the poorer cleaning "power" and from being gunged up with vile and germ-ridden muck caused by the low temperatures. However, it's not just washing machines. It has recently come to the National News and Media attention that modern TV's use around 400% as much electricity as older, CRT based, sets. Energy Saving Light Bulbs are now becoming a widespread and large scale problem because disposing of them safely once they are dead is simply not happening in many (possibly most) areas of the UK. There is also the issue of whether they are bad for our health in operation, which is contentious and seems far fetched but is certainly not yet disproved, and it is now publicly acknowledged that the claims about light output which are made have been much exaggerated and that in fact higher powered "energy saving" lamps are needed to match the output of tungsten lamps than has previously been claimed. (The latest figure that I have seen quoted by Which? states that rather than 11 watts of energy saving power to match the output of an old 60 watt bulb it is in fact more like 22 watts of Energy saving power that is really needed - this makes the savings much less attractive.) Energy Saving Recommendations have been exposed to be seriously flawed, for example the leading Energy Saving advisory body in the UK has admitted, in writing, that it only tests appliances which the manufacturers ask them to test, so there are likely to be much more efficient appliances on the market, which do not get recommended because they are never put forward for testing. The same organisation has also admitted, in writing, that they make no claim at all that modern appliances save energy over older models, simply that the appliances which they test are the best currently on offer. There has been a huge move to using Combi boilers rather than traditional hot water systems, and yet combi boilers use more gas (often up to 5 times as much) compared to traditional ones and frequently are designed to have a working life of just 6 years - neither of these "features" is environmentally friendly in the least. And yet, despite all of the things that Joe Public is being asked or told to do, big businesses and The Government in particular continue to gobble up fuel and produce waste products at ever increasing rates and are exempt from most of the schemes that apply to domestic users. My faith in the green initiatives has dwindled over the past year to almost zero and I sadly find myself concluding that in fact Joe Public can't really make any positive difference at all because commercial users more than outweigh any good that we do. However, at the same time, Joe Public is being swindled out of vast sums of cash, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes not, in order to make these doomed attempts to be green.
I’m a dyed-in-the-wool believer in Global Warming and in being environmentally friendly, however I’m afraid I am finding that with every passing day yet another fatal flaw is being exposed in all the environmentally friendly schemes that we, the end-users, are being asked (and in many cases forced) to engage in.
Washing machines now use cold water to fill with and low water levels. This means that, amongst other things, laundry is not washed properly (there is extensive debate about this on other boards on this site but for now please accept that I have proved this to be the case in my own washing machine and at least 2 test organizations that I have heard in programmes on BBC Radio 4 have concluded the same), laundry is not rinsed properly (this is widely accepted and seems to be the cause of little or no controversy) and machines break down more regularly because of the extra wear and tear on parts from longer washes to try to compensate for the poorer cleaning “power” and from being gunged up with vile and germ-ridden muck caused by the low temperatures.
However, it’s not just washing machines.
It has recently come to the National News and Media attention that modern TV’s use around 400% as much electricity as older, CRT based, sets.
Energy Saving Light Bulbs are now becoming a widespread and large scale problem because disposing of them safely once they are dead is simply not happening in many (possibly most) areas of the UK. There is also the issue of whether they are bad for our health in operation, which is contentious and seems far fetched but is certainly not yet disproved, and it is now publicly acknowledged that the claims about light output which are made have been much exaggerated and that in fact higher powered “energy saving” lamps are needed to match the output of tungsten lamps than has previously been claimed. (The latest figure that I have seen quoted by Which? states that rather than 11 watts of energy saving power to match the output of an old 60 watt bulb it is in fact more like 22 watts of Energy saving power that is really needed – this makes the savings much less attractive.)
Energy Saving Recommendations have been exposed to be seriously flawed, for example the leading Energy Saving advisory body in the UK has admitted, in writing, that it only tests appliances which the manufacturers ask them to test, so there are likely to be much more efficient appliances on the market, which do not get recommended because they are never put forward for testing. The same organisation has also admitted, in writing, that they make no claim at all that modern appliances save energy over older models, simply that the appliances which they test are the best currently on offer.
There has been a huge move to using Combi boilers rather than traditional hot water systems, and yet combi boilers use more gas (often up to 5 times as much) compared to traditional ones and frequently are designed to have a working life of just 6 years – neither of these “features” is environmentally friendly in the least.
And yet, despite all of the things that Joe Public is being asked or told to do, big businesses and The Government in particular continue to gobble up fuel and produce waste products at ever increasing rates and are exempt from most of the schemes that apply to domestic users.
My faith in the green initiatives has dwindled over the past year to almost zero and I sadly find myself concluding that in fact Joe Public can’t really make any positive difference at all because commercial users more than outweigh any good that we do. However, at the same time, Joe Public is being swindled out of vast sums of cash, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes not, in order to make these doomed attempts to be green.
0 replies It's all a rip-off and a big con! People with less money suffer the most every time. New products, especially washing machines, are not as well made as they were 25 - 30 years' ago and get scrapped because most people don't have them repaired, they just buy a new one instead every time. More landfill on the parts that can't be recycled! More and more products are being made in China, but the do-gooders don't moan about the thousands of miles these goods travel from China to be exported and they don't moan about China's poor environmental track record. Neither do they moan about the poor quality of these Chinese-made goods that break quickly and end up in our landfill! Instead, they tax us to death for using cars and petrol, tell us off for using water, so now we have new washing machines that don't rinse properly and cause no end of allergies (and require running extra programmes without detergent to make them rinse clothes PROPERLY). It's all a money-making excuse and if the government can justify charging us just for driving into a city (e.g. the congestion charge in London) for "environmental reasons", they can! Is this the future we want?
It’s all a rip-off and a big con! People with less money suffer the most every time.
New products, especially washing machines, are not as well made as they were 25 – 30 years’ ago and get scrapped because most people don’t have them repaired, they just buy a new one instead every time. More landfill on the parts that can’t be recycled!
More and more products are being made in China, but the do-gooders don’t moan about the thousands of miles these goods travel from China to be exported and they don’t moan about China’s poor environmental track record. Neither do they moan about the poor quality of these Chinese-made goods that break quickly and end up in our landfill! Instead, they tax us to death for using cars and petrol, tell us off for using water, so now we have new washing machines that don’t rinse properly and cause no end of allergies (and require running extra programmes without detergent to make them rinse clothes PROPERLY).
It’s all a money-making excuse and if the government can justify charging us just for driving into a city (e.g. the congestion charge in London) for “environmental reasons”, they can!
Is this the future we want?
My comment on the other article is quite interesting. DO WE REALLY NEED TO DUMP OUR OLD APPLIANCES TO SAVE THE WORLD? That shows my views on people like AMDEA.
Likely replying to Oliver Shaw
Hi Oliver, I agree with everything you said.
I have posted a comment on the page Do we really need to dump our old inefficient appliances to save money and the world? so I will just link to it, rather than post the same views here:
Likely replying to WMUser
Hi WMUser and Dave,
Where did you hear that about Combi-boilers, Dave?
Ours is nearly 8.5 years old, gets a bit clogged up with limescale from time to time, but a 10 minute job to put it right. It has a washing machine (IAR Siltal), dishwasher, shower and two baths connected to it, not to mention four sinks and the central heating system. It is cheap to run, about the same as the traditional boiler at our last house, and that was only for central heating and it was a smaller house. Our gas bills are certainly not excessive. There are three of us in this house, 3 baths/showers per day, about 9 dishwasher loads per week and the washing machine connected to the hot water does about 10-15 loads a week (My Bosch has a cold supply on a Y adaptor so does not count, it does 4 loads a week though). The heating is on quite alot this time of the year. None of our bills are that high infact, so I can say hand on heart that combi boilers are efficient.
It is not an Condensing boiler, just a normal combi.
The energy efficient light bulbs are just crap, the light they give off is awful, I much prefer the soft light of the traditional filament bulb. They have now banned pearl light bulbs. What can I say, these people are just useless, time wasting buffoons! Every time you turn on the TV you hear environment this, environment that, to say I am p155ed off having rammed down my troat on a permenant basis would be the understatement of the century.
This planet has heated up and cooled down more times than I have had hot dinners, so cannot see how man has altered it, or if so it will be so slight beyond beleif.
No longer can you make an informed choice, if you buy a new washing machine for example it will take in excess of 2 hours, will not wash or rinse properly and will not last. My Bosch(now about 16 years old, 5 years younger than myself!) is the opposite to this shyte, it works and keeps working and whats more keep my excema and dermatitis at bay. I also intend to keep it going indefinatley if at all possible.
I how ever do not believe in global warming in the least, my own choice, not swayed either way by others. As Myself, Dave and WMUser are on the recieving end of this claptrap I am disgusted to be putting up with it and wish we could do something about it.
The way I feel about the government, if it has a profit margin (tax) they love it if it hasn’t they hate it. There is only one way of summing them up absolutley F***ing useless. They government are as useful as AMDEA.
I have seen massive changes in my life (21 years and 2 days) and really am disheartened about what is happening to the country, what will it be like in 20, 30 years, if this carries on life will not be worth living. We will be told what to do and when to do it and how to live our lives. As and when I have children what will it be like for them, it upsets me to think of it.
Is this what we really want?
All the best,
One very annoyed Oliver.