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> Buying a 20+ old washing machine will cost you a lot in electricity and wasted water.

Does the cost of the electricity and water an old machine uses equal or exceed the cost of the electricity and water involved in having to make a brand new appliance instead of using an already-made one?

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At some point, yes. Washing machines use a lot of power and water, and any savings on those will eventually earn themselves back.

Where exactly that point is, I don't know. I'm generally in favour of repairing old devices, but from what I understand, washing machines have a limited lifespan, and a lot has been improved about their efficiency in the past 20 years.

I don't know, I'm not convinced that the savings achieved by newer laundry machines outweigh the savings of using older machines when the environmental/energy/etc costs of running modern factories to create these new machines are factored into the equation. If you compare old laundry machine A to newer laundry machine B, sure, you'd see the savings. But if you factor in the fact that to make B you also need to have an operational factory, then I'm not sure the costs are in the newer machine's favor.

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