The impact of residential construction on the volume of recycled electrical appliances

Communal laundry or private bathroom?

For many, packing up the laundry, carrying it down to the cellar and feeding it into the washing machine is a weekly ritual. At some point, there might be an argument with neighbours about who can use the machine and when. The freshly washed clothes are then loaded into the tumble dryer or hung up in the drying room, before being carried back up to the apartment. However, this ritual has all but disappeared from many tenants’ routines, replaced by washing machines and tumble dryers installed within their own four walls. So there’s no more dragging laundry down to the cellar and less social contact with neighbours. But it also means that the appliances take up more space in the living rooms. There is another consequence of this trend that is less apparent, though: more washing machines and tumble dryers that break down and need to be recycled. But how does this affect recycling volumes from a figures standpoint?

To answer the question of future growth in numbers terms, you need to take a look at the statistics and make a few assumptions. This leads us to an estimate of the increase in the number of washing machines and tumble dryers that will be recycled in the future. First of all, we estimate the number of appliances that would be sold if they were only going to be placed in communal laundry rooms. Then we look at the potential sales volume if all the appliances were installed in individual dwellings. This gives us a differential between the two extreme cases: ‘all appliances in communal laundry rooms’ and ‘all appliances in dwellings’.

Demand for appliances for communal laundry rooms

How many appliances would be needed each year for use in communal laundry rooms? We estimate this number using the building and housing statistics published by the Federal Statistical Office. These statistics give us the number of new residential buildings and the number of new dwellings per year, and classify the buildings by number of dwellings. For 2023, we can derive the proportions of residential building sizes from the data published by the Federal Statistical Office, which can be seen in the pie chart. Slightly more than half of all new residential buildings consist of a single dwelling. These are almost exclusively detached houses, plus a few houses with mixed use that have precisely one dwelling. Around a quarter of all new residential buildings have two to five apartments. The other quarter is made up of buildings with six or more apartments.

So the statistics give us a figure for the number of dwellings constructed per year. This raises the question of how many appliances are in the communal laundry room for each building. We estimate that one washing machine and one tumble dryer are installed in buildings with one to five apartments. In buildings with six to nine apartments, we assume that there will be two washing machines and two tumble dryers in the communal laundry room. In buildings with 10 or more apartments, we estimate three washing machines and three tumble dryers. Using the data from the statistics, we can now calculate how many washing machines and tumble dryers would be installed if all the buildings were equipped with communal laundry rooms instead of appliances in the apartments. The average across all building sizes amounts to almost exactly three appliances per building. As the Federal Statistical Office published the total number of new buildings for the years 2013 to 2022, we are calculating the number for these years. In the chart that shows ‘Estimated new washing machines and tumble dryers per year in new builds’, this results in the line labelled ‘All appliances in buildings’.

Demand for privately run appliances and distinction from communal laundry rooms

Next, we want to estimate the number of appliances if washing machines and tumble dryers were installed in the individual dwellings of all new residential buildings. To do this, we need the number of dwellings that are built each year. This figure is collected by the Federal Statistical Office and we can apply it without auxiliary calculations or estimates. We assume one washing machine and one tumble dryer installed per dwelling. This results in the second line in the ‘Estimated new washing machines and tumble dryers per year in new buildings’ chart that is labelled ‘All appliances in dwellings’.

The difference between the two extreme cases of ‘all appliances in communal laundry rooms’ and ‘all appliances in dwellings’ is 55,000–65,000 units per year. This figure is a rough estimate and leaves out some factors that we do not incorporate in our rough calculation: 

• New residential buildings with communal laundry rooms are still being built. 
• Buildings that have both small and large apartments may have a communal laundry room for small apartments, while larger apartments have their own appliances. 
• Private dwellings may use combined washing machine and tumble dryer appliances. 

Dwelling renovations, which have so far been ignored, are also important. There are no statistics available for the number of renovated dwellings that also get their own washing machines. We rely on a pure estimate for this proportion, and we increase the number of assumed appliances for new buildings by 50% to 80,000–100,000 additional appliances installed per year.

Impact on the return of large household appliances

The return of large electrical appliances is measured in tonnes in the SENS take-back system. This technical report contains the latest return figures in the article «Quantities Swico/SENS». In 2024, 41,000 tonnes of large household appliances were recycled. How will this volume change when the additional washing machines and tumble dryers from private dwellings are recycled?

Using data from the SENS and Swico capacitor study, we were able to determine the average age of large household appliances at the time of recycling: 17 years. If, in the estimated scenario of a complete shift to private machines, an additional 80,000–100,000 units were to be installed in dwellings, these would be recycled on average 17 years later. To estimate the consequences for return volumes, this number has to be converted into a weight. For the input-based tally of metal contents, SENS determined average weights for washing machines and tumble dryers in a number of batch processes. A washing machine that is recycled today weighs on average 72 kg, a tumble dryer 50 kg. The additional items in recycling therefore corresponds to 5,000–6,000 tonnes per year.

These considerations suggest an increase of 10–20% in large household appliances. However, it is important to remember that this is a forecast with numerous assumptions. It also excludes all other trends, such as new appliance types flowing into the SENS large appliance channel, or a lighter appliance weight due to the decrease in metals in favour of plastic.

Timescale of increased recycling volumes

The question of how this increase progresses over time remains unanswered. Has it already happened or is it yet to come? The trend towards installing washing machines in dwellings is hardly new. A small survey amongst architects shows that the majority of owner-occupied apartments and new builds in the high-end segment have been built with washing machines in the apartments since the mid-1990s. This trend intensified in the 2000s, and now washing machines and tumble dryers are often installed in renovations, and in low-cost apartments built by private developers. The situation differs somewhat for projects with an environmental focus or cooperative developers; they tend to build communal laundry rooms or leave them in place. The cited benefits of communal laundry rooms include fewer problems with vibrations in the building, less susceptibility to damage, and a better life cycle assessment that comes with fewer installed appliances. There are also examples of communal laundry rooms being upgraded to communal spaces to further promote interaction between tenants and mitigate potential conflict. 

Looking at overall construction activity, the trend towards appliances in dwellings is confirmed by all the architects surveyed. In terms of timescale, the effect on recycling volumes should already be noticeable. The return of large electrical appliances for recycling remained largely stable until 2017, with an increase from 2018 onwards. The difference in return between the five-year period before 2017 and the five-year period after 2017 is about 17% by weight. This increase is well in line with the estimated increase due to installation of washing machines and tumble dryers in dwellings. The increase in installed washing machines and tumble dryers could be at least one major reason for the increased amount of large household appliances sent for recycling.