Time for a RANT

Well the washing machine was beyond repair so we need to find a new one and thats not so easy. It seems every shop or online site we've visited offers a slightly different model and there is so much choice but the worst thing of all is that the only machines available nowadays take in cold water only and proceed to heat it to the required temperature. I'm all for low temperature washes but I am totally against heating water in the machine when we already have a tank full of hot water. We are using our multi fuel stove 24/7, it keeps the core of the house warm, runs a radiator in the hall and heats the water, so much hot water that I've often in the past put a wash on or we've both taken baths to use some up and cool the tank. The machine that is now bust took in both hot and cold water and had a neat little programme for a short wash that used only the hot water available and didn't heat it up at all. We really are trying to be ecological here but it seems we are fighting big business that prefers the profit from reducing the amount of mechanism in a washing machine rather than thinking about the environment and the preference of customers.
Sometimes I wonder about the whole environmentally friendly business. We were waiting in Heathrow airport last year and sitting quite close to an area of rubbish bins, one for glass, one for newspapers and one for other rubbish. Passengers were carefully placing their waste in the correct bin and eventually along came a cleaner with a trolley and emptied each bin of sorted rubbish into one huge bin. I wrote to the airport authority when I got home and received a reply that they had experienced some training difficulties. Training difficulties, shouldn't the guy have had appropriate bins to decant into. Likewise our own recycle collection that takes plastic, paper, cardboard and tins in the same bin, does someone at the depot sort them out as they can't possibly be recycled together.
I know I'm no saint, I drive a car, I take flights but I do try to recycle, I garden organically, buy locally and don't use central heating, yet against my will I shall end up with a cold fill washing machine and wait hours for it to heat the water and clean our laundry. And I won't even mention our sonic toothbrush that has packed in and how we need to replace the whole charger or the whole handle but no one at the manufacturers can tell me which bit has failed. Luckily I still have a manual toothbrush and the strength to operate it, think of the saving both for my purse and the planet.