A simple piece of rope hangs between some environmentally friendly Americans and their neighbors. On one side stand those who have begun to see clothes dryers as wasteful consumers of energy (up to 6% of total electricity) and powerful emitters of carbon dioxide (up to a ton of CO2 per household every year). As an alternative, they are turning to clotheslines as part of what Alexander Lee, founder of the advocacy group Project Laundry List, calls "what-I-can-do environmentalism."
But on the other side are people who oppose air-drying laundry outside on aesthetic grounds. Increasingly, they have persuaded community and homeowners associations (HOAs) across the U.S. to ban outdoor clotheslines, which they say not only look unsightly but also lower surrounding property values. Those actions, in turn, have sparked a right-to-dry movement that is pressing for legislation to protect the choice to use clotheslines.
Surely by now someone has designed a rotary clothesline that generates electricity, if only to put an end to petty arguments like this one.
2 comments:
Surely this falls into a conspicuous consumption pattern of behaviour, the idea that air drying indicates poverty and the lack of resources to do it indoors. The environmentally friendly will win this one.
Well, seeing as the environmentalists I know of are predominantly left wing, I'd say there were a few wannabes involved there
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