I heard something about using plastic beads (rather than water) to clean clothes as early as five years ago, while I was still in college. Well, turns out it's a commercial product available to Dry Cleaners, Hospitals, Athletic Facilities and other businesses that do a lot of laundry, and Xeros, the company that makes it, is looking into selling a domestic version.
A lot of the articles I read called it "Waterless Cleaning" but the process actually uses 25% as much water as a modern washing machine - still, that's a big improvement, and important in a dry state like Colorado.
There is another claim that strikes me as weird - Xeros says their plastic beads a simultaneously highly engineered and impossible for anyone else to manufacture AND can be recycled right alongside empty 2-liter plastic bottles. Unless there is some sort of patent protection on the beads (which there probably is) I don't see how those two things can be true at the same time.
Anyway, once this comes on the market, we'll be looking at it very carefully. We might be due for a new washing machine at that point anyway.
A lot of the articles I read called it "Waterless Cleaning" but the process actually uses 25% as much water as a modern washing machine - still, that's a big improvement, and important in a dry state like Colorado.
There is another claim that strikes me as weird - Xeros says their plastic beads a simultaneously highly engineered and impossible for anyone else to manufacture AND can be recycled right alongside empty 2-liter plastic bottles. Unless there is some sort of patent protection on the beads (which there probably is) I don't see how those two things can be true at the same time.
Anyway, once this comes on the market, we'll be looking at it very carefully. We might be due for a new washing machine at that point anyway.
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