Oxwash is a laundry and dry cleaning startup that brands itself as “space age,” with the goal of disrupting the traditional laundry service.
Oxwash was founded in 2018 and has raised £1.75 million in 2020 to launch its software-enabled “Lagoons” in Cambridge and London. Lagoons are what the company called its first washing hubs, which were funded with a £300,000 pre-seed round.
They are harnessing the power of science to overhaul an outdated and highly polluting industry so as to bring truly sustainable laundry to everyone.
The current industry is very polluting, using systems that shed harmful chemicals and synthetic non-biodegradable fibers into the local water system and oceans on a wider scale.
Their process is nontoxic and saves up to 60% of the water consumption versus a typical domestic or commercial washing machine.
On average they save 174kg/CO2 per tonne of laundry washed, 25 litres of water per wash, and prevent 100million plastic microfibers from going out into the oceans each day.
Oxwash takes the water that was used in a previous wash, sterilizes it, and reuses it for the next cycle. This saves up to 60% of the water consumption compared to a typical commercial washing machine.
After this, Oxwash uses a microfiber filtration system to filter the reclaimed water and captures over 95% of all the fibers that have been shed during washing.
This prevents plastic pollution of the waterways and drinking water.
In order to disinfect and sanitize the water, Oxwash uses ozone that is generated using a blend of electricity and oxygen from the air we breathe.
Adding in automation, Oxwash is able to dose the right amount of biodegradable detergent and prevent surplus chemical usage. They are in the process of expanding services from the UK to cities in the US and throughout Europe.
Reference- Oxwash website & Online Newsroom, Forbes, Tech Crunch, Clean Technica