"Clean Clothes vs. Clean Water": Consumer Activism, Gender, and the Fight to Clean Up the Great Lakes, 1965-1974

Abstract

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the polluted Great Lakes became a central focus of the North American environmental movement. A majority of this pollution stemmed from phosphate-based laundry detergent use, which had become the primary product households used to wash fabrics after World War II. The large volume of phosphorus in these detergents discharged into the lakes caused excess growths of algae to form in waterways, which turned green and smelly. As the algae died off, it reduced the oxygen in the water, making it less habitable for fish and other aquatic life, a process known as eutrophication. As primary consumers of laundry detergents during the time period, women, particularly white, middle-class housewives in the United States and Canada, became involved in state/provincial, national, and international discussions involving ecology, water pollution, and sewage treatment alongside scientists, politicians, and government officials. Their work as volunteers, activists, and lobbyists influencing the debate and ensuing policies on how best to abate this type of pollution, known as eutrophication, has often been ignored. This thesis recognizes the work women completed encouraging the enactment of key water quality regulations and popularizing the basic tenets of environmentally-conscious consumption practices during the environmental movement in the early 1970s.