Washing Clothes with Plastic Pellets

A recent article from the magazine Popular Science introduced a new concept in laundry: Using about 10% of the water currently used for washing clothes, not to mention a fraction of the detergent, the prototype washer from Xeros includes two nested drums. The inner drum contains the clothes.  The outer drum contains nylon beads.  The polarized molecules in the nylon attract and collect dirt.  At the end of the cycle, the inner drum spins, forcing the beads out.  The linked article contains an image to help you visualize the process.

Although this is an intriguing notion, I can’t help but wonder if this is an efficient method of cleaning clothes.  How does the plastic work on stained clothes?  Also, I can’t help but wonder if I’m going to be fishing out those plastic pellets with every completed load.  The company has a demo video claiming that 99.95% of the beads do return to the outer drum at the end of the cycle.  This is something I’d have to see to believe–and not just once, but after five years.  That sounds like a potential problem to me.  I’m also concerned that delicate clothes won’t be able to withstand being pulverized by these pellets.

This prototype is promising, that much is certain.  However, I’m not yet quite convinced that this is the future of laundry.  I think it needs just a little more development to get people to catch on to the idea.  Best of luck to Xeros.

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