Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com