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AnonTechie [soylentnews.org] writes:

Sorry, Levi's: you can't clean your jeans by freezing them.

Yesterday, Levi Strauss & Co. CEO Chip Bergh made headlines for giving advice his company has given repeatedly over the past few years. Levi's customers can just freeze their jeans to clean them, Bergh says, instead of washing them. Some of their jeans come with instructions that tell customers to "wash them as little as possible" and "throw them in the freezer to kill germs and stink" instead.

Washing the denim kills bacteria, as does raising its temperature to extremely high levels — at least 121 C. But freezing a pair of jeans, alas, is not likely to kill all the bacteria on them. "We freeze bacteria at -20 or -80 C and can then regrow them," says Julie Segre, a researcher at the National Human Genome Research Institute who studies the bacteria that live on human skin. Sure, overnight freezing might kill most of the bacteria. But if some remain, they'd likely be able to recolonize the denim quickly after it warmed back up. That's because the dirt and dead skin cells present in the jeans — which serve as the bacteria's substrate — are left entirely intact by freezing.

http://mashable.com/2014/05/20/levi-ceo-jeans-wash ing/ [mashable.com]

http://gizmodo.com/5857596/sorry-levis-freezing-yo ur-jeans-will-not-ungross-them [gizmodo.com]

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