The latest market data from leading statistics companies indicate that, in the UK alone, we now consume over 2.6 million washing machines per year. Yes, you have read that and the title of this article correctly, 2.6 million washing machines per year are sold in the UK.
If we extend that and look at Greater Europe, it's over 21 million washing machines, a year!
When we started ISE in 2006 there was roughly 1.5 million washing machines replaced in 2005. Five years later that figure has almost doubled.
You have to ask, why? How on Earth can our consumption of washing machines double in such a short space of time?
Well, the reason for it is really very simple, retailers and most manufacturers say that people want cheap washing machines and that's what they produce, what people want which is cheap washing machines. The trouble with this of course is that cheap washing machines are not "quality" washing machines and they tend not to last as long, be economical to repair when they break down and subsequently get thrown out.
The answer to this problem for most manufacturers is, produce more washing machines, cheaper. Sell more units, make more money. Happy manufacturer, happy retailer both with bigger profits.
In order to do that they move production to the likes of China, Brazil, India and other low cost labour countries and cut down on the quality to give the bare minimum that they possibly can. You end up with machines that have a design life of a few hundred to a thousand cycles.
This in turn means that the average family of four doing the published industry average of 250 cycles per year will get, at most, about four years out a machine before something goes horribly wrong. The problem is, the "average" is just that, an average across all use.
The "average" family use from our own internal research says that we would expect a normal washing machine in a normal family home to be used about eight to ten times a week. Simple math then tells us that's about 420 to 520 cycles a year.
That's about two years use for many cheap washing machines.
People do buy into the idea that they can live with a cheap washing machine as over 80% of all washing machines sold in the UK cost under £500.
Where we differ is that we have changed the ISE range and cut it down to only the high quality Swedish machines now that are designed to last a minimum of 8,000 cycles but are in fact tested to 12,000 cycles. That's somewhere between about 18 years and 28 years of use although we would expect most people to get around 21 years use out of one of our washing machines.
That's potentially ten times the lifespan of a cheap £200-400 machine.
We take the view that our machines, when you look at an ISE washing machine in this light they are actually a bargain and that buying cheap washing machines is not only damaging our environment, using needless resources and feeding global companies corporate profits but, it's costing people an awful lot of money as well.