Since its creation, Project Laundry List has helped people in Hawaii, Colorado, Vermont, Maryland, and Maine gain the right to dry their laundry outside on clotheslines. They’ve also helped conduct polls that found millions of Americans changing the way they do laundry, and learning the right steps to take through the various media stories that Project Laundry List has helped shape.
But, despite
the proven success of Project Laundry List in its “air-drying and cold-water
revolution” thus far, the organization and its objectives still aren’t taken
seriously by everyone. They have difficulty raising funds from the public for
their projects, and if everyone in politics took them seriously, millions of
Americans wouldn’t be denied the right to hang their laundry.
As Project Laundry List’s founder and Executive Director, Alexander Lee, says, his organization’s work “is a desperate passion” that stems from his long-lived desire to preserve the environment. The organization came to fruition in 1995 when Alexander, a student at Middlebury College, heard well-known anti-nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott give a speech in which she said, “If we all did things like hang out our clothes, we could shut down the nuclear industry.” A law degree and a candidacy for state representative later, Alexander is as passionate about promoting change as he ever has been, and is undeterred by those who doubt his organization and its goals.
So why clotheslines? Alexander says hanging laundry is a gateway activity that can lead to other green-living practices, because clotheslines and drying racks are inexpensive (unlike other green tools like solar panels) and it takes little effort to hang out a load of laundry. Alexander says they’re also a symbol that resonates with people of all ages.
“People are nostalgic about their time with ma or gramma spent running amongst the sheets and clothes,” he says. “Hanging laundry is a tactile and olfactory experience. Clothes hung in the sun last longer and smell better.”
Clotheslines were also chosen because the alternative ways of drying laundry—namely using dryers—require significant amounts of energy, are polluting, and costly for households. Laundry, and drying laundry, is a routine task that everyone does, and in North America, there’s a heck of a lot of people using electric or gas powered dryers, all of which emit carbon.
But despite
the name, Project Laundry List, the organization works toward a vision that is
much larger than just hanging out laundry. Their vision includes: a world where
people are happier and he
althier, where nations and individuals only use the
energy and resources that they need, and “notions of sufficiency and frugality
drive consumer decisions and energy policy.” A world where the predominant
energy sources are renewable and “frugality, or thrift, needs to be a
universally practiced virtue.”
Thrift and thrifty living applies to the environment and its resources in the same way that it does to individual households who are looking to save more money. Living thrift is all about finding the best ways to use resources including, food, energy, time, and money, and the great thing is that what’s best for the environment is typically better for your wallet too--being wasteful with resources isn’t thrifty. Alexander says that thrift and a mindset that’s geared toward thrift plays a big role in environmental preservation.
“This is a finite world and if we use stuff up willy-nilly instead of preserving it as best we can for the enjoyment and care of subsequent generations that is intergenerational genocide,” he explains. “Yup, I used the G-word.”
But, despite the evidence that we’re wasteful with resources, people continue to drag their heels when it comes to the environment and making changes that suit a more eco-friendly way of living. Project Laundry List works for people’s right to hang laundry, but Alexander says the real crisis “is the 90 per cent of Americans who regularly use a dryer when other viable, solid options exist that use little to no energy. I’m sympathetic to those who are not allowed to hang out, but the problem is much bigger than that.”
When asked what he thought it would take for these heel-draggers to wake-up and change the way that they think about resources, our planet, and how they live in it, Alexander quite cleverly says, “Extinction? A mighty whirlwind right out of the Old Testament...or bankruptcy. We are a society obsessed with mammon. A price on carbon would go a long way toward waking people up. I come across lots of folks unmotivated by the overwhelming evidence that we are destroying the planet through our lifestyle, but when you tell them that they can save 20 to 50 per cent on their utility bills with a few changes, they are awake and engaged.”
Money talks
and the opportunity to save money is definitely a motivator for many people who
are already hanging out their laundry. To convert the rest of the population, who,
despite the proof that alternatives like hanging out laundry, biking instead of
driving, and growing your own veggies are better for the planet and will save
you a significant amount of money, still cling to their resource-sucking and
polluting appliances and cars, a significant change in outlook needs to occur.
Alexander says it’s nice to have someone to blame (and burn in effigy when the revolution comes) for planting the seeds and shaping the attitude that still prevails with many people today. After WWII, Ronald Reagan was the spokesperson for GE (General Electric) and their ‘Live Better Electrically’ campaign. Families started buying up big appliances like washers and dryers because of the ‘modern conveniences’ that the appliances were said to bestow upon their owners. As Alexander explains, this mindset still exists, hindering greater conversion to a greener way of living.
“People still believe they can ‘have the modern life’ if they just have the right stuff,” he says. “How has that worked out? Can you imagine a billion Chinese each with a dryer, a dishwasher, and electric hot water heater? A better day is coming. It has to be.”
Project
Laundry List has and continues to work toward that ‘better day.’ The
organization’s ongoing endeavours include, the ‘slow laundry movement’ where
local chapters of Project Laundry List educate households about hanging
laundry, cold-water washing, and clothes recycling; participating in the annual
National Hanging Out Day; A Million Solar Dryers pledge to get people to commit
to air drying at least 80 per cent of their laundry; and a “Right to Dry
Campaign,” to name a few. In particular, Project Laundry List is organizing a
Clotheslines Across America Tour (to start in July 2011) where Alexander and
others will cycle from San Francisco to Lubec, Maine, motivating households to
cut t
heir carbon emissions by 20 per cent in 20 days, the whole way along. Alexander
says the tour, which will use “leadership by spectacle” to motivate others,
will be “modeled on what would happen if Steven Colbert set out to mimic
Gandhi’s March to the Sea,” and he intends to cycle until he’s given shelter
and fast until he’s given vegetarian food.
His local bike shop donated his wheels for the pilgrimage and he says he hopes that the Trek Ride+ hybrid bicycle (an electric assist bike) will “become to this century, what GM and Ford were to the last.” If he fails and the Ride+ doesn’t become the vehicle of choice for this century? “I am changing my name to Chrysler and moving down to Washington, DC. At least I will be in good shape.”
This morning,
I did a load of laundry and hung it out to dry on the little clothesline that
stretches the length of my suburban backyard. It took me less than 10 minutes
to hang that load of clothes in the sun. To me, that 10 minutes was time well
spent; I saved money because I didn’t use the dryer; I know that my 10 minutes of
labour—if you can even call it that, I quite enjoy hanging laundry—will help to
keep my household carbon emissions and energy usage in check; and the few
minutes of fresh air and sunshine was a welcomed break from staring at my
computer s
creen.
Thrift and environmental preservation go hand in hand; approaching our use of resources with the same thrifty attitude that we use to scale back, reduce waste, and save money in our homes, would go a long way toward a greener tomorrow. Hopefully, with organizations like Project Laundry List leading the charge toward a more sustainable way of living, more people will make changes to their lifestyle and the ‘better days’ that Alexander spoke of will be just around the corner.
At the bottom of a page on the Project Laundry List website, there’s a quotation from Benjamin Franklin that’s quite fitting. I leave you with it, and hope it inspires you to make more time to, as Alexander puts it, “hang out.”
“We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately" ~Benjamin Franklin.
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