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China leads the way in clothes lines...

laundry.jpgCHINA WATCH Honestly, Greenbang has never seen a dryer in China. I have lived in cities and rural areas in China, and always hang up my laundry in a clothesline and wait them to dry under the sun, so do the people around me.

For us, buying a machine to dry the laundry is still inconceivable.

“We got the sun and the wind, why bother to use electricity to dry the clothes.” A friend of mine said.

“Will Chinese people still hang up the laundry if we are rich enough to afford a dryer, I don’t’ know. At least, we are enjoying the smell of the sun in those clothes, and I think that’s already part of our culture, like using chopsticks.”

China may not doing a good job in saving the planet, but some of our “uncivilized” living habits help to save some energy and carbon emission.

And clotheslines have got a following in America: an article in New York Times states.

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Looking for fellow clothesline fans, I came across the website of Alexander Lee, a lawyer and 32-year-old clothesline activist in Concord, N.H.

In 1995 Mr. Lee founded the Project Laundry List, a nonprofit organization, as a way to champion “the right to dry.” His website, laundrylist.org, is an encyclopedia on the energy advantages of hanging laundry.

There were more than 88 million dryers in the country in 2005, the latest count, according to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers. If all Americans line-dried for just half a year, it would save 3.3% of the country’s total residential output of carbon dioxide, experts say.