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Refrigerators, lighting, and clothes dryers are the top energy consumers in modern households. Most of us would find it challenging to live without lights or refrigeration. But for dryers, there is an alternative–an inexpensive, solar-powered tool: the clothesline.
Two years ago, my wife and I installed one in our backyard.
By using the sun to dry our laundry, we are reducing our reliance on carbon and avoiding other emissions from power plants. We can also put off replacing our old dryer for three to five years, saving money and natural resources.
The best location for our clothesline means that it is visible from the street. In some locations, that would make us criminals.
Many communities or landlords restrict the use of clotheslines. They are considered an aesthetic nuisance, and some people even claim that clotheslines reduce property values in their neighborhoods.
According to Project Laundry List, twenty percent of Americans live in places where line drying is restricted or banned.
In recent years, the Right to Dry movement has challenged such restrictions by lobbying for pro-clothesline legislation. Florida now prohibits bans on clotheslines, and other states have debated such legislation. There is even an online petition asking the White House to hang the First Family’s laundry on a clothesline as a gesture of solidarity.
Such efforts may seem frivolous in the face of the huge environmental problems that climate change is causing. But people are searching for tangible ways in which they can contribute to solutions, and solar drying is an easy and inexpensive fix with no down side.
Web Links
Project Laundry List
http://www.laundrylist.org/
Wall Street Journal article on the Right to Dry
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119007893529930697.html
Photo, was taken on July 1, 2009, courtesy of Mike LaCon via Flickr.