Ecoforce Recycled Clothes Pegs – Rustproof and UV stable

Written by Vlad on April 28, 2011 – 12:16 pm - 7,078 views

Ecoforce Recycled Clothes Pegs are waterproof and made out of UV stable plastic. They are immune to many of the problems that plague traditional clothes pegs like rusting, rotting and being damaged by exposure to sunlight. They come in a pack of 24 consisting of 12 green pegs and 12 yellow pegs. They are made by Ecoforce, who are based in the UK.

I bought these from my local Coles Supermarket for $3.99, and they are also sold at Woolworths.

Why I Bought These Clothes Pegs

I am now responsible for 100% of laundry duty at home. Regrettably, there still isn’t a gadget that takes wet clothes out of the machine and hangs them up neatly on the washing line on my balcony, so I have to do it myself. Naturally, I have used my engineering aptitude to optimise this chore to get it done faster – that reduces the inconvenience.

Many of the problems I experienced were related to my clothes pegs. My old clothes pegs were a mixture of wooden clothes pegs with coiled metal springs, plastic clothes pegs with coiled metal springs and plastic clothes pegs with metal leaf springs. These were my problems:

Problem: Wasting time taking and returning pegs from the peg bag

I noticed that I was wasting time taking pegs out of the peg bag as I hung up each item on the line, only to put them back in the bag when I took the clothes off. It would be easier just to leave the pegs on the line, but I knew that exposure to the elements would cause them to deteriorate faster and exacerbate the other problems below.

The Ecoforce pegs can safely be left on the line when not in use.

Problem: Rotting and rusting pegs were staining my clothes

I live near the coast, so moisture in the air contains a bit of sea salt. Many of the wooden clothes pegs were rotting, probably due to prolonged and repeated exposure to rain and salty air. The timber had turned black and would often cause a visible stain on light-coloured clothes. Fortunately, rotting timber stains wash off.

However, some of the coiled metal springs in both wooden and plastic springs would start rusting. The rust would often transfer onto my clothes, leaving rust stains. Often, I could not get these off white clothes, which I had to throw away.

As the Ecoforce pegs are completely made of plastic, they do not rot or rust, so do not stain clothes.

Problem: UV light from the sun weakening the plastic pegs

Ultraviolet (UV) light is a component of sunlight and is damaging to most plastics, as the high energy of short UV wavelengths breaks the chemical bonds in the polymer chains of the plastic. This manifests itself in the plastics fading, cracking, becoming brittle and eventually disintegrating. I’ve commonly had plastic pegs snap when squeezing the prongs together to open the mouth.

Higher quality plastics have chemicals added to them to absorb UV light, protecting the polymer chains. Unfortunately, all the pegs I’ve had until now appears to have been made of cheap plastic susceptible to UV damage.

The Ecoforce pegs are the only ones I have seen advertised as UV stable.

Problem: Creasing/Damage to Fabric caused by the mouth of the pegs

When you hang large items like shirts and towels on a washing line, you usually fold them over the line and place two pegs on both sides.

When you then take them off the line, you can often see an indentation or crease mark at the locations that the pegs were placed.

I noticed that on newer items of clothing, these crease marks would disappear after a few minutes and the fabric would be perfectly flat again. However, over time, the fabric weakened and the indentations would remain. Eventually the fabric would be weakened so much that a hole would form at the peg locations.

I concluded that this was caused by several factors:

• Folding clothes over the washing line created stress on the fibres of the fabric at the location of the fold
• The mouth of the clothes pegs gripped hard around the fold, further increasing the pressure on the fabric on the fold line
• The teeth (contact surface) of the pegs would apply a lot of pressure on the areas that they gripped just below the fold line

Until now, the only ways I knew to reduce this was to:

1. Vary the location that I placed the pegs, when hanging the clothing on the line
2. Place the pegs on hem lines where the fabric is thicker
3. Take clothes off the line as soon as they had dried

The Ecoforce pegs have addressed this problem in the following ways:

• They have a curved mouth, so they have a relaxed grip around the fold line
• The teeth are offset further away from the fold line, and are wider and longer, so they reduce the pressure on the fabric at the point where they hold it in place

Other Notes

The packaging states that they are made from 93% recycled plastic, so they are are good for the environment. I am not able to evaluate this.

For me, it was more important that the pegs functioned well for the intended purpose. If the environmental claims are true, then that is an added bonus.

Tags: clothes, clothes hanger, clothes line, clothes pin, peg
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