Nobody was dirty: Intervening in inconspicuous consumption of laundry routines

Abstract

Collective conventions play a significant role in resource consumption, in particular habitual, inconspicuous consumption ingrained in daily practices. To embed pro-environmental default practices in everyday life, an understanding of materiality, habits and cultural context is useful. Household rituals consume environmentally critical resources; laundry provides an example of this phenomenon, cleanliness collective conventions leading to inconspicuous routinised consumption of laundry resources (water, energy). Intervening into cleanliness conventions, thirty-one people in Melbourne were engaged to wear the same pair of jeans for three months without washing them. Transcripts from interviews about their experience were used to draw insights on how individual courses of actions are shaped by collective conventions. Considering participants' experience of materiality, habits and cultural context, indicate that to save environmental resources shifting collective conventions may be more effectual than challenging individual routines. This paper explores some of the opportunities, in intervening into the inconspicuous consumption of laundry routines and shifting collective conventions towards low wash acceptance, with implications for other mundane resource consuming lifestyle practices.

What Leads to Lunch—How Social Practices Impact (Non-)Sustainable Food Consumption/Eating Habits

“…Research on the prospect of changing consumption patterns with a social-practice approach was conducted by [47,48]. Hargreaves [49] was able to show that a change in awareness will lead to a slow change in practices over the course of the coming repetitions, and collective conventions play a strong role in the dynamic of a practice and can even prevent development if a change includes going against what is expected and accepted: "Collective conventions therefore have the potential to push sustainability further than individual 'green tinkering'" [50]. On the other hand, argues that niche-practices develop despite conventions next to 'mainstream'-forms of social practices.…”

Should there be more showers at the summer music festival? Studying the contextual dependence of resource consuming conventions and lessons for sustainable tourism

“…them into the laundry basket after only one or two wears (Jack, 2013;2017). The second is that everyday water consumption is not best thought of as a matter of personal choice.…”

Reframing Water Efficiency: Determining Collective Approaches to Change Water Use in the Home

“…Compared to a tradition of weekly washing, the average of 4.7 washer loads a week reported above is a remarkable increase in frequency of washing. Another notable trend is the shift from boil-washing to modern washing in which average settings are 40-50 o c. Furthermore there is evidence to suggest we now wash for convenience rather than cleanliness or hygiene [27], the consequence of this being the increased tendency towards partially full washer loads. These long term trends are problematic as while enhancing the technological efficiency of washing machines will offer benefits, without engaging with such patterns of practice these will not be optimized and in the long term likely to be offset by increasing frequency of washing.…”

“…The fourth perspective presents demand as an effect of socio-technical practices, hereby departing from psychological perspectives, typically with vociferous criticism [3]. From this perspective domestic water consumption is mundane and inconspicuous, entangled the continual achievement of everyday life [27,28]. Rather than being guided by explicit values and beliefs consumption is guided by collective conventions; "shared, accepted ways of doing things" [27] which are coproduced with water provisioning infrastructures and household technologies; intangible meanings around, for example, cleanliness and convenience; and tacit, experiential understanding and skills that reflects ways of doing.…”

“…From this perspective domestic water consumption is mundane and inconspicuous, entangled the continual achievement of everyday life [27,28]. Rather than being guided by explicit values and beliefs consumption is guided by collective conventions; "shared, accepted ways of doing things" [27] which are coproduced with water provisioning infrastructures and household technologies; intangible meanings around, for example, cleanliness and convenience; and tacit, experiential understanding and skills that reflects ways of doing. Furthermore domestic water demand is implicated in the organization and coordination of everyday life for example parenting, work and leisure, each with their own associated collective conventions [29].…”