In fact, bans on clotheslines may be going the way of cosmetic pesticides and cigarette smoking in public places. There is even a “Right to Dry” activist movement that is trying to establish clothesline rights. This laundry underground includes those frugal folks who’ve always used a clothesline and are a bit befuddled as to what all the fuss is about, people from countries where hanging out the laundry is part of the culture, those who don’t like other people making up rules regarding their lifestyle habits, and those who realize that foregoing a clothes dryer is an easy adjustment to make in order to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide sent into the atmosphere. 

Although these initiatives are springing up spontaneously across North America (Europeans really never gave up the clothesline) they are networked through an organization called Project Laundry List, founded in New Hampshire in 1995 by a young lawyer named Alexander Lee. Project Laundry List uses words, images and advocacy to educate people about how simple lifestyle modifications – including air-drying one’s clothes – reduce our dependence on environmentally and culturally costly energy sources. The organization started when students at New Hampshire’s Middlebury College, concerned about Hydro- Quebec’s plans for major dam projects and the expansion of nuclear power, started to hang political messages on a clothesline at protests. Now, its Right to Dry Campaign encourages lawmakers to introduce Right to Dry legislation that would prevent community covenants, landlord prohibitions and zoning laws that stop people from using clotheslines. Its Stop the Ban! Campaign uses a public airing of communities and landlords that prohibit clotheslines in order to encourage their use. Project Laundry List has chapters across the U.S. and Canada, in the U.K. and Asia. 

Lee and his chapter volunteers are kept busy these days advising sympathetic politicians on how to word and pass bills that override clothesline bans. North Carolina, for instance, has passed a law invalidating city or county limitations on “energy devices based on the use of renewable resources.” Florida and Utah also have laws that prohibit “state or local laws or regulations or private contracts from limiting the ability of dwellers to erect and use clotheslines for the drying of clothes.” 

In Canada, the mayor of the Town of Aurora, just north of Toronto, is pushing the provincial government to consider whether clotheslines could be classified as a technology or service. Phyllis Morris says the designation would allow her constituents to override subdivision property agreements that prevent homeowners from hanging their laundry out to dry. Her campaign has been endorsed by environment groups, including the Conservation Council of Ontario and the World Wildlife Fund of Canada. On the other hand, the Oak Bay Green Committee in British Columbia cautions that in some areas – such as their Vancouver Island community – there are “suburban myths” that perpetuate the idea of municipal bans on clotheslines when they really don’t exist. 

Those in favor of bans on clotheslines say that environmental leanings have to be balanced against the desires of those who find their neighbors’ blue jeans, undies and flannel nightgowns to be unseemly, unsightly or both. However, those against the bans – including Vermont Senator Richard McCormack – dismiss such concerns. He recently told the Christian Science Monitor that amid growing concern about global warming, governments have a responsibility to protect people’s right to voluntarily conserve, if not actively support energy conservation. 

The numbers tell the conservation story clearly. Electric and gas dryers emit an average of 1,440 pounds of carbon dioxide annually, or up to 10 percent of residential energy use. The website www.stopglobalwarming.org reports that line drying your clothes in the spring and summer can prevent an estimated 700 pounds of carbon dioxide per household from releasing into the atmosphere. 

This is the information that Project Laundry List tries to communicate each April 19 on its annual Hang Out Your Laundry Day. Handing out wooden clothespins, generating community discussion about simple ways to save energy and providing basic information about local energy sources are the three central activities of most Hang Out Your Laundry Day events. Laundry is often used as a beautiful art form to attract public attention. Statistics and sentiments are often painted on T-shirts and pants to make the case for using a clothesline (e.g., “Hang Your Pants, Stop the Nuke Plants”.) Now is a good time to gather together your friends and neighbors and start planning for the 2008 Hang Out Your Laundry Day.