Hang on this . . .

Close to 6% of all home energy use in the United States comes from clothes dryers, and the figure for Ecuador would probably be comparable—though, unsurprisingly, unavailable—if more than a few homes had a dryer.

Derek and I are among a small percentage of people in Ecuador who do have a clothes washer and an even smaller number who own a clothes dryer, but thanks to my beloved clothesline, that 6% is a wash.

If you do your laundry in a river, which is common method here and around the world, it is possible that you aren't actually wasting any water cleaning your clothes, but hand-washing your clothes using a domestic or public water tap—also a common task here—is a huge drain on the water supply. In fact, if you use a machine you could actually be using the same amount or even less water as hand-washing.


In either case, however, here in Ecuador, whether you use a machine, a community laundering station or Nature's laundromat, the soap and other toxic chemicals eventually end up in a watershed somewhere, of some kind. To help offset the damage of the runoff, biodegradable soaps are available in Quito and around the country, not to mention the various kinds of natural cleaning agents to be found in Ecuador's flora. Unfortunately, the number of people who use these eco-friendly cleaners is dismally low.

So, the verdict on clothes washing machines: depends.

The dryer, though, now that's a different story entirely. Ours is an ancient GE that has been handed down to us and is probably a good twenty-plus years old. At first, we used it a little, then we cut down to using it when it rained and or when something dearly needed a warm toss, and now we just can't be bothered. Like nearly all Ecuadorians, we always tote the wet laundry out to the line, where it can dry under the equatorial sun in a shockingly short amount of time — sometimes much more quickly than in the GE's searing fluff cycle.

While washing machines certainly provide a measure of convenience, they now seem entirely superfluous to me -- a luxury as easy to abandon as television, dishwashers or Kleenex. Having said this, though, I still believe that household appliances were/are great liberators, especially for American women in the postwar era and women chained to the domestic responsibilities around the globe. And you won't see me giving up my favorites anytime soon.

I guess the point of these points, however, is that many customs in the developing world that look "green" to heavy consumers in the Global North are simply practical cost-saving measures or simply a lack of alternative: line-drying, river-washing, natural soaps, reusing glass beer and water bottles, turning grain sacks into tarps, etc.

And hey, line-dried clothes smell great—even better with a little lilac or honeysuckle growing nearby.