Tumble Dryers

After watching Amelie last night, I was thinking about things I like and don't like on my walk to work this morning. And I definitely don't like tumble dryers.

We had one growing up, but it was rarely used. Only for bedding and towels if it was pouring so we couldn't hang them outside. I know it's nice in the winter to dry everything quickly, so that especially in damp student housing, you don't have smelly clothes hanging around taking about a week to dry, but nothing beats sun dried clothes. One of my favourite things in the world is when I can get into a freshly made bed, and the sheets are all crisp from the sunshine and just smell of outside.

So the main reason that I don't like tumble dryers is that they are bad for your clothes. As a self confessed Squirrel, I hate to part with my clothes and literally wear them to death. I have items which I was wearing 5 years ago which I still wear now and I am sure that some have them have lasted so much longer and still look fine to wear now because I don't tumble dry them.

Tumble dryers work by passing warm or hot air through the machine as it rotates, which helps to evaporate moisture from the clothes. So the main actions are heat and agitation. One of the methods of felting is to apply heat and agitation to the fibres. This causes them to shrink and fuse together and so this is essentially what happens to our clothes in the tumble dryer. Holes are more likely to appear as the fibres fuse together, and then are stretched as they are worn. Bad. I definitely don't want my clothes to shrink!

Tumble dryers also cause clothes to lose their softness as fibres are lost from the surface of the fabric. Again, not good.

The other reason why I don't like tumble dryers, is that they are really bad for the environment. And expensive. The average home clothes dryer has a carbon footprint of approximately 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of CO₂ per load of laundry dried. A carbon footprint is "the total set of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by an organization, event, product or person." To compare, the carbon footprint of the train to Woking and back would be just over 4kg. The train to Edinburgh and back for one passenger would be 24kg (so 6 tumble dryer loads). A return flight to Edinburgh would be 193k (so about 48 loads).

In comparison to this, the carbon footprint of a tumble dryer seems fairly low. But in my flat for example, there are probably 4 tumble dryer loads a week (not me!!). This is carbon footprint of 416kg per year which could easily be avoided!

Hopefully we haven't already missed Summer and we will get some sunshine over the next few months so that I can dry my clothes outside in lovely sunshine!