The greatest invention of the 20th century was the washing machine, argued Hans Rosling in his widely viewed TED talk. Laundry used to be a backbreaking task that dominated most women’s working weeks: boiling and scrubbing, stirring and wringing, rinsing and mangling, scalding and corroding. At the push of a button, the washing machine emancipated half the population.

And so, as I gaze at the clammy laundry refusing to dry in my bedroom, I wonder: will the greatest invention of the 21st century be clothes that don’t need washing at all? Pangaia is one eco-fashion startup that dangles this dream in the form of an off-white seaweed fibre T-shirt, treated with peppermint oil. Its natural freshness will apparently save up to 3,000 litres of water over its lifetime. Yours for $85 (£67).

An Unbound Merino T-shirt. Photograph: PR

Unbound Merino has developed a T-shirt you can wear for weeks without ponging. Wool & Prince makes “odour-resistant” boxer shorts and shirts for men, plus a dress that doesn’t need to be washed for 100 days. Its founder, Mac Bishop, was inspired to wage war on washing after a spell in the marketing department of Unilever. “The only way to grow as a laundry detergent brand is to make customers feel as if they need to keep washing their clothes more and more,” he told Fast Company. His clothes mostly rely on what you might call evolutionary tech: superfine wool that doesn’t trap sweat or moisture, breathes naturally and helps regulates temperature. Ask a sheep.

For while new tech liberates, it also ensnares. As soon as washing machines became commonplace, standards of cleanliness went up a few notches. Frank Trentmann, in his history of consumerism, Empire of Things, notes the only 5% of Germans changed their underwear daily in 1966, compared with 45% in 1986. “Here was a cruel contradiction: new equipment promised to turn housework into leisure, but women had been brought up in a culture where idleness was considered unwomanly. Time saved went into another round of hoovering.” Or making clothes “whiter than white”.

The capitalist hygiene imperative has a huge environmental cost. Synthetic fabrics contain plastic microfibres that enter the water supply each time you wash them. Then there is all the wasted water, gas and electricity. Fashion Revolution calculates that a quarter of any garment’s carbon footprint comes from washing; over-washing will reduce its lifespan too.