Reviving the Lowly Clothesline

"One dryer, Alex Lee knows today, eats up to $100 or more in power each year while emitting up to a ton of carbon dioxide. Collectively, America's more than 80 million dryers annually burn 6 to 10 percent of all residential electricity — second only to refrigerators and the equivalent of 30 million tons of coal or the output of the nation's 15 least productive nuclear reactors.

Lee, 33, sees clotheslines as the solution. But a growing number of housing complexes and communities, viewing them as eyesores that lower property values, have gone so far as to ban them.

Aiming to change attitudes and laws, Lee founded Project Laundry List. What began as a college campaign to promote clotheslines has grown into an internationally known nonprofit organization 'to educate people,' according to its mission statement, 'about how simple lifestyle modifications, including air-drying one's clothes, reduce our dependence on environmentally and culturally costly energy sources.'"