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Comment by JoshMnem | Hacker News Reader

Electric dryers are also a huge environmental burden due to electricity consumption. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think electric dryers require many power plants worth of electricity. In many parts of the world, air drying is normal.

If anyone is looking for ideas on how to make the world a better place, look into figuring out how to shift the culture so that air drying becomes more common. Also composting toilets.

Edit: Drying clothes uses 56 billion kWh of energy in the US.[1] Another related area that needs work is standby power.[2]

[1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=96&t=3

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/science/just-how-much-pow...

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Which is why HE washers spin so damned fast. It’s cheaper to centrifuge off a bit more water than to heat it out of the clothes.

US uses 3000+ billion kWh of electricity so dryers are meaningful but not that huge of an impact. I think there are better areas to focus such a campaign.

It's something though, and the rest of the world is following the US in many ways. As electric dryers increase with the population and development in places like Asia and Africa, the numbers will increase.

Sure, it would be a net gain. I am just saying replacing 2% of fossil fuel production with wind/solar seems a lot easier than getting 300+ million people to do something else to save under 2% of electricity usage.

Socially, improving commuting infrastructure so people waste less gas would easily have a larger benefit and you are not going to fight nearly as hard.

Etc etc, this might be top 50 but it's not a top 10 and it's hard.

The win would be in mindset shift. How are 300+ million going to care about dryers but not all the other growing ways to be enviro-conscious like avoiding the stack of plastic packaging you get from ordering food delivery?

People waste so much energy without thinking about it and for reasons that aren't particularly more convenient, like using disposable dishware instead of just rinsing off your plate when you're done. I look around at my peers even here in Mexico and see a shift, like asking for no straw when ordering a michelada.

So focusing on the specific energy usage of dryers begins to sound near-sighted. Nobody suggested that dryers alone cause all waste.

The disposable dishware, I saw it in the US, and it's just the most unbelievable thing I can think of. Having grown up in Europe, I was astonished to see people actually eat out of disposable dishware. I'd expect it at a party with a ton of people, because then you just throw everything away, but for normal daily life? Insane wastage.

Thin paper plates for example have rather minimal environmental impact. They are actually better for the environment than running a nearly empty dishwasher.

PS: For manufactured products cost is often a reasonable first approximation of environmental impact. When you get 300 paper plates for 2 cents each they really can't take many resources to manufacture. Further, by ending up in a landfill they actually act as a carbon sink.

> They are actually better for the environment than running a nearly empty dishwasher.

Washing a few dishes by hand just takes a moment.

Hand washing does not get dishes as clean. 70+C Water is useful in this context as it kills off bacteria which can help cut down on disease transmission.

I don't think it's healthy to live in a sterile environment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/23/children-all...

https://www.webmd.com/allergies/news/20150223/could-a-dishwa...

The trick is to do both. Then you have addressed nearly 5% (rounding up a bit) of the US's fossil fuel dependence...

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