If there is one culprit in the household that sucks up an enormous amount of energy and has the potential to be a blight on the environment, it's the laundry room.

Apart from an electrical furnace, a clothes dryer is one of the biggest electrical draws in the home, using an average of 4,500 watts of electricity. Washing machine energy use differs depending upon whether it's a front-loading or top-loading unit, but this appliance still uses a considerable amount of energy.

According to estimates, an average person does one load of laundry per week, weighing in at roughly 15 pounds. Considering the average family contains four to five people, that's around five loads of laundry a week, depending upon the season of the year and how many sets of clothes are worn per day (active families may change more frequently). Therefore, it's easy to see how doing laundry can impact the environment -- and how making some simple green changes can do much to help the planet.

Switch to cold water loads
It is estimated that 95 percent of the energy washing machines use goes toward heating the water if you choose "hot" wash cycles. Washing your clothes in hot water instead of cold water for a year uses more electricity than leaving the refrigerator door open 24 hours a day for a year. There is no evidence that hot water cleans any better than cold water, especially when detergents designed specifically for coldwater use are available. So skip hot water, which can shrink or discolor clothes anyway. Be green and save some green, too.

Avoid harsh chemicals
Laundry detergents are full of ingredients designed to scour clothing. While many break down readily in the environment, they may have lasting effects on aquatic life. Some ingredients in laundry detergents, such as colorants, may actually cause cancer or other ill effects in humans. Today a number of laundry detergents that are comprised of safer ingredients for people and the environment are available. For very lightly soiled clothing, or items that just need refreshing, you may be able to go without detergent for the load.

Do larger loads
It is economical and better to wash a large load of laundry than to do several small loads where the machine is underfilled. However, when drying clothes, the reverse may be true. Attempting to dry too many clothes at the same time may result in more energy use from rerunning the dryer over and over.

Toss out dryer sheets and liquid fabric softeners
These products, meant to soften clothes, are typically full of chemicals that are not great for the environment or people. For example, ingredients include alpha-terpineol, benzyl acetate, camphor, benzyl alcohol, limonene, ethyl acetate, pentane, and chloroform. Some of these components have been known to impair respiratory function, cause headaches, cause skin disorders and contribute to cancer. A better idea is to use baking soda or vinegar in the wash to naturally soften clothes (just don't use vinegar at the same time as bleach because mixing may cause toxic fumes). Some synthetics are naturally soft, negating the need for softeners anyway. Other ideas include:

• Toss a ball of aluminum foil into the dryer with clothes cuts down on static cling
• Don't dry clothes all the way; leave them a little damp to reduce static
• Don't mix synthetics with cotton clothes to reduce static