Dr Cameron Tonkinwise
University of Technology, Sydney
Shared Laundering: Designing Sustainability in relation to Historical Habits
This small research project is taking up the claim that laundering via communal facilities (shared basement laundries in apartment complexes, or commercial laundrettes, whether DIY or full-service) is more water efficient (and energy and resource efficient) than laundering via privately owned washing machines (www.laundrywise.com). The efficiency gains (mitigated by transport impacts and mechanical rather than air drying of washing) come not only from the higher performance levels of commercial equipment in shared laundering facilities, but also the altered laundering habits associated with shared laundering facilities, namely bigger, less frequent loads (Behrendt et al, 2001). At its most basic level, the project is testing these claims.
On the assumption that shared laundering does afford water efficiency gains, particularly in higher density housing contexts of urban consolidation (at one point BASIX was proposing to award points to developers for inclusion of shared laundering facilities), the project is also attempting to determine who is still using shared laundry facilities, and why. Initial indications are throwing up a complex of social phenomena (listed from least to most significant): longer term cost-benefit calculations; current financial situation (limiting capital expenditure on a private machine); current social circumstances (eg a relationship break-up leaving one party without a private machine); long-term gendered laundering habits (reproduced from mothers [eg Kaufman, 1998]), but also socio-technical path dependent habits [eg Rip &Kemp, 1998]); current work-life habits (eg being a traveller, but also being able to drop-off for bag-wash on the way to work); constraints of the dwelling (eg no room for a private machine [eg Behrendt et al, 2001]); time-budget calculations leading to the outsourcing of certain domestic tasks (eg Jalas, 2006).
As this has elaborated a picture of people’s rationales and practices that is much more complicated than assumed by the ‘rational man’ model, but also the social change models being used in environmental education and consumer citizenship, the project is also elaborating a wider historical and cross–cultural sociology of laundering, supplementing Shove. In particular, noting the diverse and prolific attempts throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century to collectivise and industrialise domestic tasks as part of urbanisation (eg Hayden, 1981), makes apparent the ahistorical naivety of current ‘product-service system’ approaches (Jelsma & Knot, 2003). The project is also extending to examinations of wider practices of product-sharing (eg car-sharing, toy libraries), as compared to burgeoning web-enabled social-sharing economies (eg Benkler, 2004).
The project is concluding by attempting translate these more abstract accounts of laundering as a historical socio-technical practice into designs, both of products associated with laundering, but also of laundering services (Mager, 2005), particularly in communal rather than commercial settings, that could make more sustainable forms of laundering more comfortable and convenient.
Email: Cameron.Tonkinwise@uts.edu.au