Every Sunday I do my ironing. I have to wear reasonably "smart" clothes to work four days a week and on Friday we're allowed to dress down. Every Sunday night, depending on how tired I am, I try to iron four shirts and a pair of trousers.
It has always occurred to me that ironing clothes is a waste of time and energy. It serves no purpose other than to adhere to a social convention. If I were putting Lean Six Sigma onto my life, I think it would probably come under the category of "necessary waste" since it is there to comply with the law (an unwritten social law enforced by the Central Scrutinizer) which adds no value to the value stream.
I just found a calculation I did about three years ago to work out the impact to atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions that ironing clothes causes.
I used official UK government statistics on the proportion of electricity generated by fossil fuels and the carbon dioxide gas produced.
For my calculations. my electrical iron is rated at 2kW and I estimated the heater to be operational 50% of the time. It takes me about 5 minutes to iron a single item, and I do 5 at a time.
To cut a long story short, I calculated that in the UK, given 2013 electricity generation data, 1 million of me doing my ironing would produce about 244.5 Te of carbon dioxide gas.
Here's my data:
Constants Seconds per Minute 60 kcal/joule 0.000239005736 1 billion 1000000000 Seconds per Hour 3600 1 million 1000000
Iron Power (W) 2000 Time to Iron (mins) 5 Time Heating (%) 50 Energy per Item (J) 300000 Energy per Item (kcal) 71.7017208
MtCO2e 178.5 Energy Supplied (Gwh) 304155
CO2(kg) 178500000000 Energy Supplied (J) 1.094958E+018 Mass of CO2/unit energy (kg/J) 1.63019951450193E-07
CO2e(kg) per item ironed 0.048905985435058
CO2e(kg) per million items ironed 48905.9854350578 CO2(Te) per million items ironed 48.9059854350578
Items/person/week 5 1 Million People (Te) 244.529927175289
A Waste of Time and Energy
Every Sunday I do my ironing. I have to wear reasonably "smart" clothes to work four days a week and on Friday we're allowed to dress down. Every Sunday night, depending on how tired I am, I try to iron four shirts and a pair of trousers.
It has always occurred to me that ironing clothes is a waste of time and energy. It serves no purpose other than to adhere to a social convention. If I were putting Lean Six Sigma onto my life, I think it would probably come under the category of "necessary waste" since it is there to comply with the law (an unwritten social law enforced by the Central Scrutinizer) which adds no value to the value stream.
I just found a calculation I did about three years ago to work out the impact to atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions that ironing clothes causes.
I used official UK government statistics on the proportion of electricity generated by fossil fuels and the carbon dioxide gas produced.
I have no idea if these links are still valid.
Carbon Dioxide (Equivalent) Emissions from Electricity Generation (2013)
Historical elctricity data: 1920 to 2013
For my calculations. my electrical iron is rated at 2kW and I estimated the heater to be operational 50% of the time. It takes me about 5 minutes to iron a single item, and I do 5 at a time.
To cut a long story short, I calculated that in the UK, given 2013 electricity generation data, 1 million of me doing my ironing would produce about 244.5 Te of carbon dioxide gas.
Here's my data:
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