The O3 Waterworks Aqueous Ozone Laundry System
The O3 Waterworks Aqueous Ozone Laundry System is one of those things that sounds way too good to be true. The system uses water infused with environmentally-friendly ozone to clean clothes rather than chemical-based detergents.
I expressed my skepticism to the company when they contacted me, so they sent me an laundry system to try out. I installed the system, grabbed my funkiest pile of workout clothes, tossed them into the washer, and chuckled knowingly, certain that this would defeat the unit.
Instead, I was so impressed by the results, I haven't touched my laundry detergent in a month and I don't think I will ever again.
Take a glance at the label on your favorite detergent, even natural ones, and you'll see a vast collection of surfactants, solvents, and additives. These long-chain polymers end up in the environment by the ton every year as we wash them away in our laundry. Wrap them in a laundry pod and you add microplastics to the list.
Not only are these chemicals bad for the environment, they can, conversely, speed the breakdown of your clothes over time. Add hot water to the mix and you'll find yourself picking massive lint blankets out of your dryer filter.
Washing your clothes with regular detergents and hot water produces microfibers. They break down the textiles during the cleaning process. These microfibers also end up in the environment and are emerging as another major contributing factor to microplastic pollution (since most clothes are a synthetic blend these days and contain some plastics).
Plus, the energy required to heat all that water creates enough of an environmental impact that even laundry giant Tide is encouraging households to wash their clothes in cold water instead.
There's been a ton of analysis thrown at the true cost of doing laundry. But on average, the typical 4-person household does around 8-10 loads of laundry per week, costing around $600 per year. If you're using additives like fabric softener or scents and using hot water instead of cold, that cost goes up even more.
And if you're using a front-loading washer, you're likely dealing with funky smells, requiring you to spend extra on tub cleaners, adding additional cycles to your annual load.
O3 Waterworks Aqueous Ozone Laundry System
This is where Waterworks' ozone laundry system comes in. They use a diamond electrolytic cell to pass a charge through regular tap water, creating water that's infused with dissolved ozone. That ozone then reacts with organic compounds and oxidizes them, removing them from your clothes just as effectively as any detergent.
They're not the first ozone laundry system on the market. In fact, aqueous ozone has been used commercially for decades. O3 Waterworks CEO, Corey Levy, encountered consumer applications of the technology years ago but was dismayed that the systems used substandards parts or construction and lost effectiveness over a short amount of time as a result. He knew that this technology could help consumers and the environment but it had to be reliable enough that people would trust the solution. So he set out to make sure O3 Waterworks' system was the best.
The Aqueous Ozone Laundry System uses stainless steel instead of plastic to ensure that it lasts for years instead of months. The unit also contains a variety of flow and ambient sensors to determine things like water pressure, room temperature, and humidity (hot, moist air reduces the effectiveness of ozone creation so the unit works a little harder). All of this ensures the system performs reliably no matter if it's in a laundry room in Arizona or Florida. It's also longer lasting than its competitors, operating for up to five years before it needs to be refurbished.
If you're like me, you've read all of the above with a bit of a smirk and a raised eyebrow. Asking someone to wash their clothes without detergent seems like a waste of time and about as effective as that essential oil diffuser you bought three years ago and is now mouldering forgotten in a cabinet. It goes against what we've spent our whole lives doing.
Unboxing the Aqueous Ozone Laundry System, I was impressed with the heft and sturdiness of the product. Corey Levy wasn't kidding when he said they wanted their product to stand out and be as durable as it was effective.
Installation took no time at all, less than 20 minutes. The included template made mounting the unit on the wall a breeze. What's nice is that I didn't have to worry about line-of-sight and could hang it wherever was convenient in my laundry room. The included remote (which reminds me of a car remote) is RF-based, not infrared. After hooking up the included stainless steel hoses and plugging the unit in, I was ready.
I've got a front-loading, high-efficiency (HE) washer that's heading towards the end of its effective life cycle. It washes well enough, but even with frequent tub cleaning and filter drainage, it's still a bit funky. I was told that the dissolved ozone would help with that as well.
With the press of a button, I set the laundry system to its highest setting. Then I tossed in the rank pile of workout clothes that'd been accumulating in the corner of the laundry room all week, set the washer to Cold Clean, added an extra rinse cycle (as recommended for HE machines to ensure enough ozonated water is used to clean the clothes) and started the cycle.
O3 Waterworks Aqueous Ozone Laundry System on its high setting
The Aqueous Ozone Laundry System lit up immediately with a glowing limeade green to indicate that I was using the higher ozone setting (recommended for extra dirty and bulky items). There was maybe a bit of an ozone tang in the air when I came back to check on things in the middle of the cycle, but otherwise there was really no difference between this and a normal load of laundry, except I hadn't added detergent or softener to the cycle.
When the cycle ended, I opened the washer door and, expecting the dank funk of old, wet gym clothes, was met with a slight smell similar to what you'd smell outside after a good thunderstorm. Mostly, there was no odor at all except that of obviously clean clothes.
Emboldened by the experiment, my household has spent the last month doing load after load, not using a drop of detergent or softener. Again and again our clothes have come out clean, soft, and just as good, if not better, than if we'd used chemicals to clean them.
About the only casualties of this experiment are two shirts that I'd noted in the weeks prior as being aggressively non-colorfast, leaving blankets of lint in my dryer every time they went through a cycle. Corey Levy did say that occasionally garments could see accelerated fading if they weren't colorfast. Since they'd been reaching the end of their useful life before this, I didn't mind too much.
It’s a small price to pay for the fact that the funk I'd come to associate with my washer has disappeared in the weeks that we’ve been using the system, the slimy ring I had to keep cleaning out from around the door seal drying up as well.
Since I'm sensitive to fragrances, I don't mind the fact that there's no real scent coming from my clothes after I clean them with ozonated water. If you're firmly in the "if it doesn't smell like a greeting card summer meadow then it isn't clean," you can still add fabric softeners to the drying cycle.
You can buy the Aqueous Ozone Laundry System directly from O3 Waterworks for $399. While it seems steep, I'll save at least $400 in laundry staples and hot water costs in the first year alone. Even if I have to buy another in three years, it will have more than paid for itself. Plus, knowing that I'm reducing my impact on the environment makes a huge difference.