Tide of Change

For all its hullabaloo about green being the new crimson, Harvard is not nearly as green as we’d like to think. Sure, we occasionally eat trayless lunches in the dining hall or hold events with fancy banners promoting sustainability and speeches by the likes of Al Gore ’69. At times, the rhetoric can even come off as something out of the show Captain Planet: we claim to reduce carbon emissions and conserve energy, all to save the earth. Yet our efforts to be heroic often come up short.

Take, for instance, the matter of laundry. With over 6,000 undergraduates, Harvard students have a lot of clothes to wash. If each student does laundry once a week—and this is assuming only one load of laundry—that’s over 180,000 loads per academic year. Not only is that a lot of water, it’s also a lot of laundry detergent—over 280,000 ounces of liquid detergent, to be precise, given that the detergent of choice is doubly concentrated. Unfortunately, most of this laundry detergent, due to its chemical content, is extremely harmful for our beloved earth.

Almost every time I walk between Boylston and Wigglesworth Hall, I get a whiff of the heavenly scent of laundry, the familiar and comforting smell of Tide Original Scent and Downy. My pleasure in this perfume is momentary, however, as I remember that the source of this pleasant olfactory experience is harming the environment and my fellow citizens.

So what does that mean for those of us who care about the earth but would prefer not to smell like it? Luckily, eco-friendly detergents exist that are just as effective at cleaning clothes as their brand-name counterparts. According to the “Did You Know?” section of the label on vegetable-based detergent Seventh Generation, “If every household in the U.S. replaced just one bottle of 100 oz. 2x ultra petroleum-based liquid laundry detergent with our 100 oz. 2x ultra vegetable-based product, we could save 460,000 barrels of oil—enough to heat and cool 27,000 U.S. homes for a year!”

Using eco-friendly detergent kills two birds with one stone: saving the environment and wasting less money on oil. So why don’t more of us use eco-friendly detergent?

The answer seems to lie in product availability and accessibility. It’s difficult to find Seventh Generation—or any other eco-friendly brand, like Mrs. Meyers or Biokleen—in the immediate vicinity of the Square. In a laundry emergency, the only option is to run to CVS and grab the nearest brand, which tends not to be a bottle of earth-friendly vegetable derivatives. Moreover, eco-friendly detergents tend to be more expensive than generic detergents like Tide. At the least, a stigma exists amongst the student body surrounding such “organic” products, which are perceived as a rip-off.

If Harvard is to remain true to its mission to go green, it ought to provide students with these eco-friendly detergents at lowered prices and encourage student use of biodegradable products in the laundry rooms. Perhaps a detergent vending machine would be a feasible idea. With easy access to environmentally friendly products, students might begin to think about what they pour into the laundry machines every week.

Whatever the solution, the time to act is now. With Steven Chu, the U.S. secretary of energy, speaking at the upcoming Commencement ceremonies, Harvard should ensure that we are green in as many aspects as possible. After all, we wouldn’t want to disappoint Steven Chu. But, more importantly, we wouldn’t want to disappoint the earth.

Harvard, it’s time to give up Tide. It’s time for a new generation—the Seventh Generation.


Ayse Baybars ’12, a Crimson editorial writer, lives in Wigglesworth Hall.