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Promoted Challenge!

Elizabeth Elephant suggested this challenge and received 11 votes before it was promoted.

Challenge Activity

These people have all recently accepted this challenge.

02/10/12 CerridwynEldritch accepted this challenge, reducing CO₂ by 0 lbs so far.

02/10/12 Betty Boop accepted this challenge, reducing CO₂ by 0 lbs so far.

02/08/12 Schroesons accepted this challenge, reducing CO₂ by 2 lbs so far.

02/08/12 josh0924 accepted this challenge, reducing CO₂ by 2 lbs so far.

02/08/12 johnna64 accepted this challenge, reducing CO₂ by 2 lbs so far.

Sheets to the Wind Featured on May 07, 2009

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Challenge Details

Once upon a time, laundry smelled “spring fresh” or smelled “like a summer day” not because these smells were added to laundry detergent but because the laundry had actually been hung outside to dry in the fresh, spring or summer air and sunshine. Think about it. Would you rather have popcorn enhanced with butter-smelling “flavor” or would you rather have popcorn with real melted butter? Exactly. Give us the real deal every time. Line-drying your clothes happens to be the real deal. And it also makes a visible statement of your commitment to CO2 reduction.

This Featured Challenge again comes from our Challenge Workshop. This one was suggested by Change for 2008 and has received 11 positive votes. This idea was also suggested by roy and skye 585_23221. Their suggestions have received 7 positive votes each. Well done!

The Carbon Connection
Your clothes dryer is one of the biggest contributors to global warming in your house, just after your refrigerator. The average family of four does 4 to 6 loads of laundry each week. For an electric dryer, that accounts for about 100 kWh of electricity used each month at a cost of $100 to $180 each year. All told, 88 million clothes dryers in the United States account for up to 6% of domestic electricity usage.

The carbon connection for drying clothes is pretty simple to understand. Every time you run a load of laundry through the dryer, you are using energy. Electric dryers use electricity to heat the air that dries your laundry; gas dryers get their heat by burning natural gas. Both types of dryers use electricity to tumble the laundry. Electricity comes from a power plant which is probably powered by burning coal, oil, or natural gas. The bottom line is that we want to reduce the burning of those fossil fuels, either at the power plant or in your dryer. The less fuel you burn, the fewer pounds of carbon dioxide you release into Earth’s atmosphere.

Getting It Done
Need help meeting this Challenge? Here are a few simple suggestions:

• Start small. There’s no need to go out and buy a $250 Swiss-made, aluminum outdoor drying rack to test whether line-drying works for you. String a clothesline between two available trees or poles. Be sure to make the line tight enough to support the weight of wet clothes. If it isn’t, you’ll find out soon enough.
• Maybe you’re too young to have helped your grandmother hang laundry. Or perhaps you haven’t seen enough late 1950s television. But there’s actually a “right way” to line dry your laundry. Check out this article at the Housekeeping Channel for tips on doing the job right. For instance, you should hang shirts and socks upside down so that any stretching from being line dried isn’t on the part of the shirt or sock that shows.
• Many homeowners are not allowed to have outside clotheslines because they live in housing developments with neighborhood associations that have rules against line-drying. Check the rules where you live. And if you find that it’s time to fight those silly rules, you won’t be alone. Efforts are underway in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Connecticut to pass “right to dry” legislation. For more on the controversy, read these articles: Boston Globe: Clothesline Rule Creates Flap and Time: Fighting for the Right to Dry.
• Remember that sunlight can lighten colors. On the one hand, isn’t that a great and natural way to bleach those sheets and white shirts? On the other hand, perhaps you have clothes you don’t want to have fade in the sun. Hang those in the shade or indoors. And be sure not to hang clothes under tree branches or power/telephone lines or other places where birds hang out. Birds do what birds do. And you don’t want them doing it on your clean clothes.
• If you’re looking to replace your washing machine, get a front-loading model. Those use less water. They also leave a lot less water in your laundry, which will make laundry easier to line-dry.

Have you managed to make line drying clothes work for you? Do you have any stories you would like to share about how to work with neighborhood associations looking to ban line-drying? Do you have an ingenious design for stringing a clothesline in a small yard or city apartment? Please share your thoughts, methods, or even post cool photos in the Challenge Discussion section below.

Rules of the Challenge
This Challenge asks you to line-dry one load of laundry per week for the next 4 weeks. (Line-dry can mean drying clothes on a rack. It doesn’t just mean a clothesline.) Since we’re assuming you do two loads of laundry a week, that’s means line-drying about half of your total laundry. By line-drying one load of laundry each week, you will reduce your CO2 emissions by 4.7 lbs for the week, and by 18.8 lbs for the month. This Challenge lasts for one month and is repeatable.

If you have a family, we know that you’re probably laughing at the idea of ever having only two loads of laundry a week. When you stop laughing we still want you to take this Challenge! If they aren’t signed up already, we suggest that your family members join Carbonrally. Then they can take credit for the loads of their laundry that gets line-dried this month. A family of four line-drying 4 loads of laundry per week can rack up some serious CO2 reductions. Time to get a bigger basket.

Learn More
New York Times: To Fight Global Warming, Some Hang a Clothesline
Mr. Electricity: Saving on Clothes Dryer Costs
Project Laundry List
Real Green Goods: Indoor and outdoor drying racks, clothespins, etc.

See the Math
Care to see how we got our numbers? Let’s look at the known or estimated numbers and our assumptions:

• An electric dryer uses an average of between 3.5 and 4 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity per load. We will use the higher number. That includes energy needed to heat the dryer and tumble the clothes. At 1.55 pounds of CO2 released per kWh of electricity generate, each load is responsible for releasing 6.2 pounds of CO2.
• A gas dryer uses an average of 0.22 therms of natural gas per load to heat the dryer. (A therm is about 100 cubic feet of gas.) At 11 pounds of CO2 released per therm of natural gas burned, each load releases 2.42 pounds of CO2. The gas dryer also uses 0.5 kWh of electricity per load to tumble the clothes. So the total CO2 released per load dried in a gas dryer is 2.42 pounds for the natural gas plus another 0.78 pounds from the electricity. We’ll round this off to 3.2 pounds of CO2 per load.
• Since we don’t know which type of dryer you are using, we will average the values for the electric and gas dryers. That average is 4.7 pounds of CO2 per load.
• On average, this challenge will save you about $1.40 in energy costs.

Be proud of your clothesline. Remember that having a clothesline is a visible statement of your commitment to preventing climate change. So talk to your neighbors about it. Explain why you’ve decided to line-dry your laundry. You could be the cool, retro trend-setter who starts it all in your neighborhood. Rally retro! And keep it dry.

Discussion 155 comments so far

Benicia Bebe over 2 years ago

I do this all summer. I must say the drier comes on in the winter at times, but my old friend the drying rack helps a lot.

PrincessT over 2 years ago

For a year we have been hanging all loads of laundry but 1 per week. We live in Minnesota so for last fall/winter we rearranged our basement and strung a line down there. It took over a day for things to dry, but in the long run, our clothes are lasting longer and according to our gas bill, we are saving $25 every month!

birdman (Carbonrally) almost 3 years ago

OK, we are going for it. Just ordered a retractable line from Amazon. We’ll be the first in our neighborhood!