Sharing the Load: Turning Everyday Laundry into a Driver of Sustainable Development

Laundry, one of the most ordinary household chores, is revealed as a complex global issue in a new report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in collaboration with research partners including the Netherlands-based social enterprise MetaMeta, City University of Hong Kong, and Stellar Market Research. Despite its apparent simplicity, the act of washing clothes has far-reaching implications for water use, energy demand, environmental sustainability, and gender equity. Nearly four billion people worldwide, almost half the global population, still wash their clothes by hand. This routine activity, overwhelmingly carried out by women and girls, consumes up to 20 percent of their weekly active hours, or between 10 and 15 hours each week. In rural and urban poor households across Asia and the Pacific, laundry often means long walks with heavy water containers or bundles of clothes to streams and wells, followed by hours of scrubbing, rinsing, wringing, and folding. The physical and psychological toll is profound, leading to chronic pain, fatigue, and exposure to harmful chemicals. Yet, despite its ubiquity, laundry has rarely been integrated into development planning, especially within the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) sector.

The Hidden Costs of Washing Clothes

The report positions laundry as an intersectional crisis where social norms, environmental pressures, and economic realities converge. Handwashing consumes about 20 liters of water per load, while machine washing requires nearly 75 liters. Globally, domestic washing machines account for an astonishing 20 trillion liters of water use each year. In regions such as Nepal, where groundwater is contaminated with arsenic and iron, families rely on unsafe surface water, undermining hygiene and public health. Drainage failures mean wastewater often mixes with drinking supplies. Cold-water washing, the norm across Asia and the Pacific, is gentle on fabrics and energy-efficient but fails to disinfect unless paired with specialized detergents. Laundry also contributes heavily to microplastic pollution: a six-kilogram load of synthetic fabrics can release more than 700,000 fibers, while dryers emit up to 120 million airborne microfibers annually. These pollutants infiltrate food chains, ecosystems, and human bodies alike.

Laundry’s energy and carbon footprint are equally striking. Washing machines use 0.5–2.5 kilowatt-hours per cycle, while dryers consume even more. A single wash cycle emits about one kilogram of carbon dioxide, with drying adding another 1.5 kilograms. Taken together, washing, drying, and ironing produce emissions equivalent to 136 coal-fired power plants each year. Frequent laundering also accelerates textile wear, raising replacement costs for low-income families already living with limited wardrobes. Meanwhile, countless women who earn a living as laundry workers remain trapped in informal, insecure, and poorly paid employment, where backbreaking labor meets minimal protections.

Stories of Strain from Nepal

The report highlights human experiences that embody the scale of the challenge. Sangita, a young mother, spends hours each week fetching water with heavy jerry cans strapped to her head, devoting entire Saturdays to laundry for her family. Maili, at 65, struggles to manage laundry amid an unreliable water supply and declining strength, forced to wash standing up despite exhaustion. Ranjita, a mother of seven, spends up to 10 hours daily just on washing, further complicated by cultural restrictions that forbid washing menstrual cloths in public and require separate soaps for the task. These narratives underscore how age, gender roles, and cultural taboos compound the burden of laundry, transforming it into both a personal hardship and a systemic injustice.

Rethinking Laundry Through Innovation

To address these realities, the Asian Development Bank has launched the Laundry Transformation Initiative, seeking to reposition laundry as a development priority. Central to this vision is the Laundry Systems Framework, which encourages a systems-thinking approach that factors in structural barriers, household practices, and technological innovations. A conceptual tool called the Laundry Ladder maps household practices on a spectrum ranging from basic handwashing with soap to advanced machine washing with eco-friendly detergents. Most families in Asia and the Pacific remain stuck at the lower rungs due to poverty, infrastructure gaps, and limited access to products. By supporting households in climbing this ladder, the initiative foresees improvements in health, gender equity, environmental sustainability, and livelihoods.

Innovation is presented as both urgent and achievable. Hand-powered devices such as the Solar Soaker, Divya Washing Machine, and Tumble Drum reduce washing time and water use dramatically, making them particularly valuable in off-grid rural contexts. Simple improvements, like communal washing platforms, soaking methods, or awareness campaigns, can ease time poverty. The detergent industry, valued globally at nearly $178 billion, is also called upon to design eco-friendly, cold-water products suited to low-income communities. Inclusive business models, ranging from community-run laundry enterprises to women-led cooperatives, offer pathways for income generation, supported by microfinancing, training, and social protections such as insurance and childcare.

A Call to Share the Load

The report concludes with an urgent appeal: laundry is everyone’s responsibility. The transformation of laundry requires cross-sector collaboration that bridges water, health, gender, and environmental silos. Governments must integrate laundry into WASH programming, regulate detergents, and invest in safe water infrastructure. Civil society groups can lead behavior change campaigns, while the private sector can finance and scale up technologies, exploring circular models such as detergent subscription services tied to laundry tools. Communication campaigns must also reshape public perceptions, reframing laundry from an invisible chore into a development frontier central to dignity, health, and sustainability.

What emerges from the Asian Development Bank’s analysis is a striking reimagination of laundry. It is no longer just a domestic routine but a prism through which some of the world’s most urgent issues, gender inequality, environmental degradation, and resource scarcity, become visible. By sharing the load, humanity can transform the simple act of washing clothes into an opportunity for equity, resilience, and progress.