Here’s an Earth Day Countdown tip straight out of the common sense files - wash your clothes as a full load and save a ridiculous amount of water. It’s true that in general the average water efficiency of a washing machine has increased over the years, especially due to the development of front-loaders. Also effective have been ‘fuzzy logic’ where machines add only enough water to match the size of the load, not to mention those with knobs for low, medium and large-sized loads.

However, the best way to conserve your water when using your washing machine is still to do full loads. That half load setting still often uses more than half the amount of water.