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Amid their enthusiastic embrace of western consumer technologies, increasingly affluent Chinese are leaving one appliance behind: clothes dryers.  According to Washington Post front-page reporting,

For reasons practical as well as cultural, most Chinese consumers simply don’t like clothes dryers. Don’t want them. Don’t trust them. Won’t buy them. And even when they have them around, won’t use them.

Business interests complain, in the article, that the dryer market isn’t “fully developed”.  A PRC domestic brand “stopped producing dryers since last year because they don’t sell.”  The only people in China interested in dryers seem to be foreigners and Chinese who have lived overseas.

This is, evidently, something bad.

Shanghai authorities consider all that hanging laundry so unsightly that in April, before the start of the ongoing Shanghai World Expo, they issued an edict banning the practice of hanging clothes out to dry, along with other practices deemed “uncivilized,” such as spitting, jaywalking and wearing pajamas in public.

Yes, drying clothing in the sun is an “uncivilized” action. One has to wonder whether the Shanghai authorities have US home owner association (HOA) board members as consultants.

Evidently, moving beyond the costs (both the dryer and the electricity), the key reason for Chinese aversion to dryers is a cultural belief that sun-dried clothing is healthier.  The Post reporter, Keith Richburg, seems to find this an archaic notion.

But the real reason may lie deeper, having more to do with years of tradition and an unshakable belief in nature’s superiority to modern technology. Sunlight, most Chinese will tell you, leaves clothes cleaner and healthier to wear, and is better for the fabric, than a machine.

Richburg doesn’t, however, take any words to explore whether that “unshakable belief” has a basis in reality.  A quick exploration might have educated Richburg that the Chinese might well be right as to “nature’s superiority to modern technology.”  “Ever single … fabric can be machines washed cold and line dried …. This approach is the most gentle for the fabric and the most energy efficient …”

Now, when it comes to “healthier”, Richburg leaves several items. For example, in terms of “exercise”, which does our bodies more good: dumping things in the dryer or putting them out on a line to dry. More importantly, Richburg doesn’t have any mention of the most significant “health” implication: the elimination of the energy usage from a dryer.    Drying a load might require in the range of 2-3+ kilowatt hours of electricity. In the PRC, with a coal-dominant electricity system, roughly 1.6 lbs of CO2 is emitted per kWh. Without even considering the “embedded cost” of the dryer, itself, the average Chinese is avoiding about 5 lbs of carbon dioxide emissions (along with avoided mercury and other pollutant emissions) by maintaining the healthier choice of line drying clothing. Multiply this by, potentially, 100 million loads per day for the 1.3+ billion Chinese, and we’re talking some serious avoided emissions.

Reading Richburg’s article, Chinese preference for line-drying seems an archaic, anti-capitalist vestige to belittle rather than embrace. In fact, the Chinese choice is healthier for their pocketbooks (no dryer to buy, less ironing to do, longer lasting clothing, avoided electricity costs), for their bodies (burning calories putting clothing out to dry), and for the planet (avoided mercury, sulphur, and Co2 emissions).

NOTEs:

For  related discussions, see

• Line drying and clothes lines, Green Living Tips.
• 10 Reasons You Should Line Dry Your Clothes … If You Can, The Good Human

A related item:  The Washington Post, yesterday, had a piece that could be described as “those poor horse whip manufacturers, we need to build more buggies”, with a focus on how moving to CFLs is putting an incandescent plant out of work. The reality of such disruptions is important and the specific plant highlights the importance of an industrial policy that helps move workers caught in a transition to new employment (with, perhaps, assistance for putting in new manufacturing), but the article had essential zero discussion of the serious benefits that more efficient lighting brings to individuals, businesses, and the nation.  For a discussion, see Climate Progress: The Washington Post gets it wrong again.