As town adopts environmentally friendly policies, why not this one?

It’s another beautiful day in Davidson – sunny, not too cold, light breeze. A perfect day to conserve energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save money. A perfect day, that is, to dry your clothes outside.

Drying clothes on a line saves energy – about 5 percent of the energy consumed in the average home goes into the dryer, which is second only to the refrigerator for energy consumption. Altogether, Americans use the equivalent of 30 million tons of coal per year drying clothes indoors – that’s the output of 15 aging nuclear reactors.

Reducing energy use means reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the global warming they cause – clothes washers and dryers are responsible for 13 million metric tons of greenhouse gases per year in the US. Meanwhile, drying clothes outside consumes almost no resources at all – a length of cord that lasts pretty much forever, and some clothespins (they last a long time, too, and they are good for other uses, like holding towels around kids’ necks during haircuts and spaghetti dinners). Beyond that, the sun and the wind do the rest.

Saving energy also means saving money – about $100 a year for the average family. Here’s something to think about: the farther your dryer is from an exterior wall (where the vent goes out) the more expensive it is to operate, the more energy it wastes, and the more flammable lint is building up in that vent. If your dryer is at the center of your house, you should be hiring a chimney sweep to clean the vent. Otherwise, it just might burn your house down. The Consumer Product Safety Commission says clothes dryers caused 15,600 fires and 20 deaths in 1998.

Drying clothes outdoors also lengthens their lifespan. The lint you scrape out of that screen after every load is your clothes, disintegrating before your eyes. Drying outdoors also means you iron less, because clothes hung properly on the line, especially on a breezy day, ‘iron’ themselves.

And of course, everyone knows there’s nothing more wonderful than the smell of sheets hung on the line.

There are some downsides, of course. Your jeans are a little stiff when they come off the line (don’t worry – they soften up after you walk around a little), and towels are scratchy. (Some members of my family say that’s true of underwear, too.) But you can throw them in the dryer for a few minutes to fluff them up; you just don’t have to dry them in there.

Another disadvantage of the clothesline is that you can use the dryer every day of the year, but not every day is a good day for drying outside. The truth of the matter is, though, we have fantastic weather for outdoor drying. The cloudiest month of the year in Davidson is January, and even then, only half the days are too cloudy to dry clothes outside. Yes, it takes a little longer if it’s cold and cloudy. But they will dry eventually.

The truth of the matter is, drying clothes outside was the only way anyone dried clothes until a few decades ago, and in most countries, everyone still dries their clothes outside. Even in Shanghai, China, people living in high-rise apartments hang their clothes on racks outside their windows. My penthouse-dwelling relatives there have a dryer, but they don’t use it: they dry their clothes on the balcony like everybody else. We even had a clothesline inside our Shanghai apartment last year.

Probably the biggest obstacle to outdoor drying in Davidson is Homeowners Associations that restrict (or even ban) clotheslines. To combat that trend, Florida (another state with great drying weather) passed a ‘Right to Dry’ bill that guarantees environmentally conscious citizens the right to save energy, reduce greenhouse gases, preserve their clothes and reduce their carbon footprints no matter where they live.

How about it, Davidson? We’re now requiring developers to supply bicycle parking – how about the Right to Dry?

Shelley Rigger is Brown Professor of East Asian politics at Davidson College. Her clothesline hangs between a utility pole and a swingset in her South Street back yard.