Green Okinawa (1) Air-drying your laundry can lower your monthly energy bills and reduces fossil fuel consumption

Air-drying your laundry can lower your monthly energy bills and reduces fossil fuel consumption. A clothes dryer (tumble dryer) is one of the most energy-hungry home appliances you can use, and the action of tumble drying can wear out the fibers in your clothes. But its not easy to air-dry your laundry all year round in Okinawa since the climate can get very humid.

Here are some practical tips on air-drying your laundry.

  1.  Make the most of sunny and windy days and hang your laundry outside to dry.
  2.  Wait for good weather to wash your jeans, thicker clothes, towels and sheets.
  3.  If its rainy outside, use drying racks, hangers, peg wheels or all of the above to hang washing indoors.
  4.  If you’re lucky enough to have a cleaner at home, ask her/him to hang your clothes out when you’re at work.

Here are some tips for using clothes dryers in a cost-saving and energy-saving way (1-2).

  1. It uses less energy to spin water out of clothes than it does to dry them in a dryer. So use a faster and longer spin cycle on your washing machine before putting them in the dryer.
  2.  Part-dry clothes in the dryer and hang them out to air-dry overnight to finish.
  3.  Make sure your clothes are not tangled up when you load the dryer so that the warm air can get to the surfaces of all the wet clothes.
  4.  Make sure the air inlet is free from obstruction.
  5.  Clean the lint filter after every cycle.
  6.  Choose some clothes that you can air-dry, for example your delicate clothes, synthetic clothes or clothes you don't need the next day.

Is this all too wishy-washy for you? Please submit your own environmentally friendly recommendations for living in Okinawa from here.

1. https://www.thegreenage.co.uk/how-bad-are-tumble-dryers/

2. https://www.consumerreports.org/laundry/energy-saving-laundry-tips/

This Green Okinawa post was developed in collaboration between Yoshimasa Nakamura (OIST Resource Center) and Kate Whitfield

Tips/comments shared by the OIST community members:

Name: Maki Thomas

    Follow @zerowaste.japan on instagram or watch youtube channel "The Zerowaste Japan" The posts are all in English, and show different way to live ECO in Japan.

     

    Name:anonymous

      Reduce gasoline consumption and CO2 emissions by reducing your speed on the road. Live "uchina time"; if speed limit says "40", "50" or "60", feel empowered to follow it even if the other users of the road seem to have a different opinion on the matter. Lots of energy is wasted by repeated acceleration-braking cycles, and many cars have their optimal gasoline consumption rates near the speed limits, not above!