INTERNATIONAL
According to Oxwash, founded as a sustainable laundry in the UK’s historic university town of Oxford in 2018, household laundry produces an average of 604 kg of CO2e per person per year. However, this is not the only problem; laundry also uses billions of litres of water each year, pollutes the world's oceans with plastic fibres and endangers our own health with synthetic chemicals.
"Oxwash was founded with the explicit aim of proving that we can wash clothes and textiles without harming our ecosystems and communities," says founder Kyle . That's why it created the world's first sustainable and carbon-neutral laundry on the path to net zero and is working with German packaging company hawo to close the sustainable cycle with environmentally friendly wrapping.
The company achieves this goal by saving CO2e in every pick-up, wash and delivery. Collection and delivery are done by electric bikes, which the business claims to save 10.5 tonnes of CO2e in 2021 compared to using a standard 3.5-tonne diesel van. Oxwash also saves 2kg of CO2e emissions per 12kg of laundry through their advanced technologies. Instead of a warm wash of 40-60°C, they work with wash temperatures as low as 20-30°C with biodegradable detergents and manage to destroy bacteria and microorganisms with an integrated ozone process, leaving no harmful residue. Oxwash also reduces water consumption, claiming reductions of 60-70% water compared with other methods and machinery, with advanced machinery and a water reclamation system at the Oxford site. PlanetCare filters capture 95% of the microfibres that would otherwise end up in the ocean.
Packaging of the clean items to be delivered in environmentally friendly wrapping is also necessary so the company works with the ORGANIX packaging system from hawo in Germany.
ORGANIX is a sustainable and 100% plastic-free packaging concept for garments and textiles. Through this innovation, the textiles and clothes that have already been washed in a climate-conscious manner can also be packed with a sustainable protective cover and returned to the customer safe and clean. According to hawo, the packaging material, which is made from BIO granulate, can simply be weathered in an environmentally friendly way on the compost at home without having to use energy-intensive recycling methods.
In addition to this sustainable packaging concept, hawo is also holistically committed to a better environment. According to CEO Christian Wolf, it focuses on sustainable management, so that future generations can also experience the world in a good condition. The company's sustainability concept is characterised by four pillars. hawo produces its own solar electricity through the ‘Plan-E’ mobility concept and can thus operate e-vehicles and e-bikes itself. In this way, they are actively committed to reducing the CO2 footprint. The ORGANIX plastic-free packaging concept was developed to offer a sustainable consumable for the company's own packaging machines.The ‘Concept Zero"’aims to be largely plastic-free at both of the company's sites by the end of 2023. The company focuses on resource-efficient product design and engineering, which is why all products use a fraction of the energy of comparable products through advanced technologies and features.
With its sustainable packaging concept ORGANIXtex, hawo thus perfectly complements the concept of Oxwash, which is why the two companies have already been working closely together for some time and are jointly setting an example for a better environment and against unnecessary plastic waste.
Find out more at www.organix.eco
