Low Impact

So pretty much all nations are coming around - climate change is a problem.  By and large, to greater or lesser extents, governments everywhere are beginning to take steps to transition to greener power sources, and to help their citizens shift to more efficient ways of doing things.

Which makes the fact that solar-powered clothes driers are banned in many parts of the US and even some pockets of Australia, all the more difficult to comprehend!

I should be more specific.  I’m talking about clothes lines - you know them: a line outside which you peg your clothes to so they can dry in the sun.  Its an invention that has been with us over a thousand years.  It safely harnesses the power of the sun, ingeniously capturing that solar energy and using it to dry our clothes.  It requires no electricity.  No gas.  No toxic chemicals.  It emits not one gram of carbon dioxide to contribute to global warming.  And yet an increasing number of areas in the US are implementing bans on them.

As near as I can understand, the logic is that the sight of someone’s washing could lower property values.  This as opposed to hurricanes, rising sea levels and other such predicted effects of climate change?  Personally, I can’t think of anything less likely to make me want to move to a neighbourhood than one whose sensibilities are so alien that the sight of a sock hanging on a line in the distance is so unbearable!

Its less of an issue in Australia, which has a proud tradition of the Hills Hoist (that’s an Aussie brand of clothes line!) in the backyard.  But even in the townhouse complex I live in, clothes racks must be lower than the height of the balcony railing, lest someone catch a glimpse of my bathroom towel drying in the sun!  The situation is far more common in the US, where the culture of using an electric or gas-powered clothes drier is far more widespread.  In fact, 6% of the USA’s entire domestic power consumption is attributed to electric clothes driers!

I cannot think of a single occasion when I have needed to use the electric drier that is installed in my townhouse.  In fact, in the 3 years that I’ve lived here, I don’t know if I’ve dried a single load of clothes on it.  This is despite the body corporate rules requiring tiny, baby-sized clothes racks for use on the balconies.  I sidestep the whole issue by drying clothes on a clothes rack in the spare room.

If you live in an area where clothes lines are not permitted, don’t resign yourself to using an electric drier - a device that consumes inordinate amounts of electricity, and is the source of thousands of house fires a year.  Join or start a petition to change the by-laws or regulations in your area.  Write to your representative.  Or just dry your clothes on a rack inside!  You’ll reduce your greenhouse gas emissions, as well as save a few dollars on your power bill!

This post was prompted by an article I read this morning in the Sydney Morning Herald called “Getting pegged for letting it all hang out” by Ian Munro, which finished with a quote that really summed up for me the situation where clothes drying in the sun could be banned:

“Its very hard getting Americans to get with the idea of saving energy”, Senator McCormack said. “I so love my country.  But I look at [it] from time to time and say to myself, ‘This place is insane’.”

Photo by Michael Jastremski, Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike license, version 2.5.

Categories: community, current affairs, efficiency, environment, green, solar

Tags: regulations, solar