The towels we dry ourselves with get a lot of use and pick up a lot of microbes along the way. But how long should you wait before throwing them into the laundry?

You have probably rubbed your body with one today already. But just how clean was that towel you dried yourself with? Many of us will pop them into the washing machine once a week, while one study of 100 people found about a third of them did so once a month. A few, according to one survey in the UK, admit to only doing it once a year.
And while those fluffy fibres might not show any signs of dirt, they are a breeding ground for millions of microbes. Studies have shown that towels can quickly become contaminated with bacteria commonly found on human skin, but also with those found in our guts.
Even after washing, our bodies are still covered in microbes and perhaps unsurprisingly when we dry ourselves off, some of these transfer onto our towel. But the microbes living on our towels come from other sources too – airborne fungi and bacteria can settle on towel fibres while they are hanging up. Some of the bacteria comes from the water we have used to launder the towels with in the first place.
In Japan, some households even reuse leftover bathwater for laundering the next day. One study by researchers at the University of Tokushima in Japan found, while this saves water, many of the bacteria found in the used bath water were then transferred to towels and clothing after being laundered.
And for those of us who prefer to leave our towels to dry in the same room as your lavatory, there is some rather disgusting news – every time you flush, you are likely giving any towels nearby a light dusting with bacteria from your toilet, along with specks of your family’s bodily waste.
Over time these microbes can start to form biofilms on towels that can even begin changing how our towels look. After two months, even with regular washing, the bacteria living on cotton towel fibres start to dull the appearance of the cloth. But perhaps unsurprisingly, the total amount of bacteria and the species of bacteria depends on the laundry habits in the household. The real question is, how worried should you be about the bacteria living on your towels?

Norway is the world leader when it comes to the take up of electric cars, which last year accounted for nine out of 10 new vehicles sold in the country. Can other nations learn from it?

For more than 75 years Oslo-based car dealership Harald A Møller has been importing Volkswagens, but early in 2024 it bid farewell to fossil fuel cars.
Now all the passenger vehicles for sale in its showroom are electric (EV).
“We think it’s wrong to advise a customer coming in here today to buy an ICE [internal combustion engine] car, because the future is electric,” says chief executive Ulf Tore Hekneby, as he walks around the cars on display. “Long-range, high-charging speed. It’s hard to go back.”
On the streets of Norway’s capital, Oslo, battery-powered cars aren’t a novelty, they’re the norm. Take a look around and you’ll soon notice that almost every other car has an “E” for “electric” on its licence plate.
The Nordic nation of 5.5 million people has adopted EVs faster than any other country, and is on the cusp of becoming the first to phase out the sale of new fossil fuel cars.
Last year, the number of electric cars on Norway’s roads outnumbered those powered by petrol for the first time. When diesel vehicles are included, electric cars account for almost a third of all on Norwegian roads.
And 88.9% of new cars sold in the country last year were EVs, up from 82.4% in 2023, data from the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) showed.
In some months sales of fully electric cars were as high as 98%, as new petrol or diesel car purchases almost fizzled out.
By contrast, in the UK electric cars made up only 20% of new car registrations in 2024. Although this was a record high, and up from 16.5% in 2023.
In the US, the figure was just 8% last year, up from 7.6%.

An impression – or possibly a fear – that 20-somethings are still hanging about in the family home is based on fact, an influential think-tank has concluded.
The proportion of 25 to 34-year-olds still living with their parents has increased by more than a third in nearly two decades, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
The living at home trend has been driven by men, and those in their late 20s, researchers found.
High renting costs and rising house prices were the most significant reasons for the change.