What I suspect is that people here have massive washer/dryer combos that slurp oodles of energy, and use them only infrequently?
We can only fit one day of the clothes for the entire family in a single wash, therefore washing happens every day.
But on the other hand: If you didn't have to wash everyone's towels every night, would you still have to do laundry daily?
Bigger washer/dryers are not necessarily more wasteful, for what it's worth... it really depends on their efficiency (both for water and dryer heat). Sometimes doing it in bulk all at once can save water/energy per item even if it uses more overall. And newer machines tend to be a lot more efficient than older ones, especially if they are load-sensing front-loaders. Anyway, that's not really the point.
It's just interesting that your laundry patterns are different than anyone I've ever known. Thanks for explaining, that's all :)
Sure we could wash less if we really wanted to, but it just doesn’t signify. The washer uses like 40L of water over 30m of runtime and then it’s done. We hang the clothes (and towels) outside, and by evening everything is fresh.
The shower runs at about 10L a minute. I think you can see how the washing quickly becomes irrelevant, and the shower needs to be heated too, unlike the washer.
Washing your towel after every use is incredibly wasteful, and unnecessary. If the towel is "dirty" after you've bathed and used it to dry yourself off, then you probably should do a better job cleaning yourself while bathing.