The magic washing machine

What was the greatest invention of the industrial revolution? Hans Rosling makes the case for the washing machine. With newly designed graphics from Gapminder, Rosling shows us the magic that pops up when economic growth and electricity turn a boring wash day into an intellectual day of reading.

I was only four years old

when I saw my mother
load a washing machine

for the very first time in her life.

That was a great day for my mother.

My mother and father
had been saving money for years

to be able to buy that machine,

and the first day it was going to be used,

even Grandma was invited
to see the machine.

(Laughter)

And Grandma was even more excited.

Throughout her life, she had been
heating water with firewood,

and she had hand-washed laundry
for seven children.

And now, she was going to watch
electricity do that work.

My mother carefully opened the door,

and she loaded the laundry
into the machine,

like this.

And then, when she closed the door,

Grandma said, "No, no, no, no!

Let me! Let me push the button!"

(Laughter)

And Grandma pushed the button,

and she said, "Oh, fantastic!

I want to see this! Give me a chair!
Give me a chair! I want to see it,"

and she sat down in front of the machine,

and she watched
the entire washing program.

(Laughter)

She was mesmerized.

To my grandmother,
the washing machine was a miracle.

Today, in Sweden and other rich countries,

people are using
so many different machines.

Look -- the homes are full of machines.

I can't even name them all.

And they also, when they want to travel,

they use flying machines

that can take them to remote destinations.

And yet, in the world,

there are so many people
who still heat the water on fire,

and they cook their food on fire.

Sometimes they don't even
have enough food.

And they live below the poverty line.

There are two billion fellow human beings

who live on less than two dollars a day.

And the richest people over there --
there's one billion people,

and they live above
what I call the "air line" --

(Laughter)

because they spend
more than 80 dollars a day

on their consumption.

But this is just one, two,
three billion people,

and obviously, there are
seven billion people in the world,

so there must be one, two,
three, four billion people more

who live in between
the poverty and the air line.

They have electricity,

but the question is:
How many have washing machines?

I've done the scrutiny of market data,
and I've found that, indeed,

the washing machine
has penetrated below the air line,

and today, there's an additional
one billion people out there

who live above the "wash line."

(Laughter)

And they consume
for more than 40 dollars per day.

So two billion have access
to washing machines.

And the remaining five billion --

how do they wash?

Or, to be more precise,

how do most of the women
in the world wash?

Because it remains the hard work
for women to wash.

They wash like this: by hand.

It's hard, time-consuming labor,

which they have to do
for hours every week.

And sometimes they also have
to bring water from far away

to do the laundry at home,

or they have to bring the laundry
away to a stream far off.

And they want the washing machine.

They don't want to spend
such a large part of their life

doing this hard work

with so relatively low productivity.

And there's nothing
different in their wish

than it was for my grandma.

Look here, two generations
ago in Sweden --

picking water from the stream,

heating with firewood
and washing like that.

They want the washing machine
in exactly the same way.

But when I lecture
to environmentally concerned students,

they tell me, "No, everybody in the world
cannot have cars and washing machines."

How can we tell this woman

that she isn't going
to have a washing machine?

And then I ask my students --
over the last two years, I've asked --

"How many of you don't use a car?"

And some of them proudly raise their hand
and say, "I don't use a car."

And then I put the really tough question:

"How many of you hand-wash
your jeans and your bedsheets?"

And no one raised their hand.

Even the hardcore in the green movement
use washing machines.

(Laughter)

So how come [this is]
something that everyone uses

and they think others will not stop it?

What is special with this?

I had to do an analysis
about the energy use in the world.

Here we are.

Look here. You see
the seven billion people up there?

The air people, the wash people,

the bulb people and the fire people.

One unit like this

is an energy unit of fossil fuel --
oil, coal or gas.

That's what most of the electricity
and the energy in the world is.

And it's 12 units used
in the entire world,

and the richest one billion,
they use six of them.

Half of the energy is used
by one seventh of the world population.

And these ones, who have washing machines

but not a house full of other machines,

they use two.

This group uses three, one each.

And they also have electricity.

And over there,
they don't even use one each.

That makes 12 of them.

But the main concern

for the environmentally interested
students -- and they are right --

is about the future.

What are the trends?

If we just prolong the trends,
without any real advanced analysis,

to 2050,

there are two things
that can increase the energy use:

first, population growth;
second, economic growth.

Population growth will mainly occur
among the poorest people here,

because they have high child mortality

and they have many children per woman.

And that will get you two extra,

but that won't change
the energy use very much.

What will happen is economic growth.

The best of here
in the emerging economies --

I call them "the New East" --

they will jump the air line.

"Wopp!" they will say.

And they will start to use as much
as the Old West are doing already.

(Laughter)

And these people,
they want the washing machine.

I told you. They'll go there.

And they will double their energy use.

And we hope that the poor people
will get into the electric light.

And they'll get a two-child family
without a stop in population growth.

But the total energy consumption
will increase to 22 units.

And these 22 units --

still, the richest people
use most of them.

So what needs to be done?

Because the risk,

the high probability
of climate change is real.

It's real.

Of course, they must be
more energy efficient.

They must change
their behavior in some way.

They must also start
to produce green energy,

much more green energy.

But until they have the same
energy consumption per person,

they shouldn't give advice to others --

what to do and what not to do.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

Here, we can get more
green energy all over.

This is what we hope might happen.

It's a real challenge in the future.

But I can assure you
that this woman in the favela in Rio,

she wants a washing machine.

She's very happy
about her minister of energy

that provided electricity to everyone --

so happy that she even voted for her.

And she became Dilma Rousseff,

the president-elect of one of the biggest
democracies in the world,

moving from minister
of energy to president.

If you have democracy,
people will vote for washing machines.

They love them!

(Laughter)

And what's the magic with them?

My mother explained
the magic with this machine

the very, very first day.

She said, "Now, Hans.

We have loaded the laundry.

The machine will make the work.

And now we can go to the library."

Because this is the magic:
you load the laundry,

and what do you get out of the machine?

You get books out of the machines,

children's books.

And mother got time to read for me.

She loved this.

I got the "ABC's" -- this is why
I started my career as a professor,

when my mother had time to read for me.

And she also got books for herself.

She managed to study English
and learn that as a foreign language.

And she read so many novels,

so many different novels here.

And we really,
we really loved this machine.

(Laughter)

And what we said, my mother and me,

"Thank you, industrialization.

Thank you, steel mill.

Thank you, power station.

And thank you,
chemical processing industry

that gave us time to read books."

Thank you very much.

(Laughter)

(Applause)