My wife just got off the phone with a friend of hers who said that she is going home to Germany for a few weeks. The woman said that she always takes bleach with her to give to her mother. She says that her mother can’t get bleach in Germany.
I find this hard to believe. Is it true? How do Germans do their laundry if there is no bleach?
I don’t know about Germany, but in Spain they only have hydrogen peroxide bleach, I think. I couldn’t ever really find Chlorine Bleach like Clorox. Maybe that is what she was talking about? The Hydrogen peroxide bleach didn’t seem to work as well.
The difference between American and European laundry techniques is like night and day. While bleach is readily available from any supermarket here in the UK, generally it’s only used as a disinfectant for sinks, drains, toilets and the like. Never in the washer.
European washing machines have internal heaters, which can bring the water up to just below boiling point if the user desires. They also have very long wash cycles; mine takes 2 hours 45 minutes for a normal wash. These extended, high temperature washes mean that chlorine bleach is not necessary to get white loads spotless.
In contrast, the vast majority of American washers fill from the hot water supply, but don’t heat the water any further. They also have very short cycles of around half an hour or so. Bleach is therefore used to compensate for the lower temperatures and shorter wash times.
Regarding non-chlorine bleaches such as hydrogen peroxide and sodium percarbonate, these work better if you use hot water and allow plenty of time for them to do their job. They won’t give stellar results in a cold or warm wash cycle lasting just a few minutes. In a nutshell, non-chlorine bleach is ideally suited to the European laundry method, while chlorine bleach is best for the American method.
What kirk280980 said. Chlorine bleach is, to my knowledge, only sold for commercial (as opposed to domestic) washing applications, i.e. not in supermarkets. If your friend’s mother’s washing machine is a German model she can just wash her white stuff at the 95 °C setting with regular German washing powder, provided of course that the labels allow that temperature. I have found that 60 °C works OK for my purposes if there are no major stains.
Thanks, folks! I knew that someone would get to the bottom of this. My wife was truly impressed with the all-knowing power of the SDMB.
From an environmental point of view, this sounds like an incredibly wasteful use of energy.
Can somebody explain why they would do European washing this way?
Personally, I’ve lived for years with American washers, with shorter wash cycles, about 170-180 degree water, chlorine instead of hydrogen bleach, etc. and they seem to work very well in getting clothes clean. (In fact, I often don’t use any bleach at all, and use the warm cycle, and my clothes seem clean enough. Or is that just “guy housekeeping”?)
As Kirk pointed out, in the UK you would never use bleach. Bleach there is very strong, almost what a North American would know as drano type stuff.
FYI.
From an environmental point of view, using chlorine bleach is incredibly unfriendly, isn’t it?
YES! Also from a human being point of view. Chlorine beach is a severe poison that will burn your skin, and don’t mention what it does if you inhale it. You really want something like that on your clothes? In a short wash cycle, how do you know it’s all being rinsed out?
I’ve discovered that soap, warm water and washing soda will get everyday dirt out. The best bleach is hanging things in the sunlight. Environmental and human being friend and free.
You can buy mild bleach for clothes in the UK, but it’s only used for when you have a particularly stubborn stain which a normal wash can’t get out, which is pretty rare.
Don’t forget that European washers are mainly of the front loading type, which work by tumbling clothes in just a few inches of water. A wash cycle with four rinses still only uses between one third to half as much water, on average, as a top loader. Heating this small amount of water requires very little energy - plus, of course, you only end up heating the water the machine uses, instead of a whole tankful.
Also, the near-boil wash is only used for heavily soiled white cottons. For everyday normally soiled laundry, there are many lower temperatures to choose from, right the way down to cold. You don’t need to crank up the temperature unless the load is really mucky or dingy.
Back to the subject of bleaches, the products MC mentioned are oxygen-based, rather like Clorox 2 or OxiClean. Many detergents sold in Europe already contain similar ingredients, or you can add them separately if you prefer. If you have a heavily stained load which can’t withstand a very high temperature wash, these products will do the trick instead.
Apologies if that was more than you needed to know… my previous line of work was strongly related to this topic, and once I start reeling the info off it’s hard to stop :).
Quite the contrary as has been already touched on. Front Loaders use far less water, somewhere between 1/2 - 2/3 of a large capacity TL (even counting the extra rinses), less soap and less electricity. They cost more to purchase in the first place but far less to operate. On top of all this, they are far gentler on your clothes as they don’t have a big central agitator in the middle of the tub. That means your clothes last longer.
It really is a wonder they’ve only recently started to be accepted by the mainstream in North America just these past few years.
The mention of chlorine bleaching made me look at the laundry instruction labels of a sample of my clothing today. It seems almost everything has got the “do not use chlorine bleach” symbol (a crossed-out triangle). Even white cotton underwear marked for 95 °C (203 °F) laundry bears that symbol.
The only thing that I found marked “chlorine bleach can be used” was white bedsheets. Not a large part of the laundry for people in the nonleaky age range.
Which makes me wonder: Is it different with textiles made for the US market, i.e. is a large range of US clothing marked suitable for chlorine bleach use?
I don’t believe that any residual Chlorine would cause any more harm to the skin than going for a swim in a swimming pool. Unless you have a cite which says otherwise.
Yes. I remember when I was twelve and was preparing to mop the floor. I mixed chlorine bleach and Pine-Sol. I had to make a mad dash, holding my breath with one hand and holding the bucket with the other, out the door and when it was all over, I really felt the burn. People have died from inhaling chlorine bleach–it’s really, really reactive.
In defense of chlorine bleach, it makes a pretty effective sanitizing agent for laundry. Good for those times when I wash the kids groaty white socks with more “personal” clothing. Also, washing towels with bleach prevents them from souring on the rack during the summer because the bacteria on the towels has been killed by the bleach. Warm water (130 degree) won’t be nearly as good for sanitizing. Great for doing “soiled” diapers.
I find it hard to believe the woman carries bleach on an airplane. According to the TSA Website, bleach is not permitted either as carry-on or checked. (Scroll to page five.)
I was at a swimming pool store a few hours ago and they sell a liquid shock chlorine product for pools that’s about 10% sodium hypochlorite, the same chemical found in liquid bleach. My liquid bleach is 6% so I’d bet you could get the same results by using about half as much liquid shock in your German wash. Do they sell pool chemicals in Germany ?
FEMA recommends chlorine bleach at 8 drops per gallon to disinfect drinking water in an emergency so it’s not a bad idea to have some around.
Who said the woman needs to fly there? Perhaps she just lives on the same continent and drives or takes the train.
Or perhaps she really does live overseas but bleach is so precious to her family that it’s worth the added time and expense of booking ocean freighter travel. 
From what I heard of the conversation, she does take it with her on the plane. I suspect that she does not ask permission; she simply puts it in her checked luggage.
I’d be careful about any pool chemicals. I use those regularly and always wear rubber gloves and goggles while handling them. The liquid chlorine I buy is much stronger than 10%, I believe (haven’t checked it recently, but I remember it being an order of magnitude stronger than household bleach). The shock powder is just as wicked. Think about it: You have 18,000 gallons of green water and you throw in two pounds of white powder and overnight the green stuff is all sitting on the bottom, dead. That’s just over fifty micrograms of the stuff per gallon. Potent.