You can't call yourself green if you're still drying clothes electrically!
Forest Heights, a new subdivision outside Portland, Oregon, has done a lot of things right. The eco community has seven walking trails, plenty of conserved green space, and an ecoshuttle.
But even within this bastion of sustainability, electric clothes dryers are running, burning up energy and making their contribution to global warming. That's because Forest Heights Homeowners Association effectively prohibits the old fashioned solution: hanging clothes on a line. Theoretically, residents can hang dry their clothes, but only if they are completely invisible from every angle in the neighborhood. As Sightline Daily points out, "nearly all homes have two stories, so completely concealing a clothesline is virtually impossible."
And, interestingly enough, the home owner's covenant against hang drying may violate a 1979 Oregon Law that guarantees rights to solar heat and energy. Tell Forest Heights to rewrite their bylaws to allow hang drying of clothes
We the undersigned hope you will reconsider your rule about hanging clothes out to dry. While it is true that hanging clothes will not save the world, it is certainly one way to reduce one's ecological footprint. Conventional clothes dryers are electricity guzzlers. The electricity is often produced by burnt coal--a nightmare of global warming--or ecologically devastating dams. Please free your residents to do the right thing and hang dry their clothes.
