It's quite right that worrying about eco settings on washing machines is fiddling while China burns on extraordinary emissions. It makes little to no difference.
And PPs are right. Why change when China are the problem?! Well we have outsourced our emissions to China. We manufacture nothing anymore so can sit smugly by and point the finger.
But why are their emissions so high? Because they manufacture stuff we buy. All that crap that adorn the shelves of debenhams and you get given for Xmas that gets put in a drawer, all the plastic crap your kids have, the cheap shoes, handbags, the electronics, the phone you are reading this on and the cheap cushion you bought from Home Bargains you are sitting on, the cheap make up brushes that lasted two uses, the light bulbs, the tinsel on your Xmas tree, the cheap clothes, the household plastics, kitchen ware, furniture, cars even trains and ships. The list goes on and on.
Each of us is a consumer and responsible for those Chinese emissions and every time a new consumer is introduced to the world and our insatiable appetite to give them more and more 'stuff' as cheaply as possible we contribute to that.
It's not the fucking eco cycle on the washing machine. It's the machine itself and the consumers in every house that demand its existence and every thing else that goes with 'another consumer'.
We need existing humans to think about what they consume and stop thinking that producing more human consumers is a right.