Green Laundry – Clotheslines

I have one friend who puts her laundry out on a clothesline and another one who would except her municipality does not permit it.

I have a backyard with a shared driveway, unfenced, tiny, with no direct access into the backyard from the basement laundry. But I am all for letting those who can and want to save energy and the environment and are in a situation to do so, to do it. Why?  Apparently from this article in the Wednesday, November 14, 2007, Toronto Star, page A10, “Clothes dryer use in Ontario produces 700,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases per year.”

BRINGING BACK THE CLOTHESLINE

Michele Henry

Staff Reporter

They’re hoping the province won’t hang them out to dry.

A week after Premier Dalton McGuinty said he’d consider the issue, local environmentalists are eagerly awaiting a decision about whether Ontarians, no matter where they live, will be permitted to fly clotheslines in their backyards and hang their pants, shirts, towels and unmentionables outside.

Peter Love, Ontario’s chief conservation officer, recommended last week that the province designate clotheslines as energy-efficient, which would allow everyone to use them – if they so desire.

Declaring them such would override any codes or regulations that may exist in housing developments or communities that prohibit residents from freeing their sheets.

In recent years clotheslines have shed the stigma of being associated with poverty, becoming instead a sign of eco-awareness.

“I’m not sure what they’re waiting for,” says Phyllis Morris, clothesline activist and mayor of Aurora.

“If we can’t solve a simple thing like hanging two hooks in the backyard, what chance to we have of solving our bigger energy crisis?”

Morris, who has been fighting for the province to make clotheslines legal everywhere, is thrilled that Love included them in the 12 recommendations he made to the province last week in this third annual report.

Love says clotheslines remain low on his bigger list of priorities, but still vital. He’s interested to hear what the province has to say about the issue, hoping there will soon be a resolution.

“We’re asking people to adopt a culture of conservation in everything they do,” he says. “This is small but important. I’m not requiring everyone to use them. But at least let people have that right.”

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