Output details

The Economic and Environmental Impact of Communal Laundry Spaces in High Density Housing in the UK

This is the first journal output rising from MEARU’s EPSRC-funded ‘Environmental Assessment of Domestic Laundering’ (EP/G00028X/1). The journal is “peer-reviewed, supported by rigorous processes of criterion-referenced article ranking and qualitative commentary, ensuring that only intellectual work of the greatest substance and highest significance is published.” The title of the paper places emphasis on a continuing role for communal laundering facilities, but in order to establish a comparator, the paper also appraises the performance of appliances used in homes and related environmental issues. Twenty of the main survey sample had been monitored over two weeks at the time of writing, including direct measurement of washing and drying appliances where feasible. The total project sample of 100 dwellings includes a proportion with access to a variety of communal facilities, as did the monitored subset. In terms of the relevance and topicality of this research, even though energy-efficiency standards are being incrementally improved, power consumption continues to rise, hence retarding mitigation of CO2 emissions. Passive outdoor and indoor drying of washing loads does of course save most energy, but facilities for both were found to be poor and the negative environmental impacts of passive indoor drying are potentially serious for health and wellbeing. Asthma in particular is causally related to dust mites, in turn related to temperature and humidity levels, and so is a key item of discussion. Moreover, indoor passive drying adds to heating use – in other words compromises energy efficiency. Overall, the paper marks a valuable early stage in the analytical output from this important project, survey findings to be later augmented by laboratory and modeling work.