Go make yourself heard...

Because he's awesome, President-Elect Obama has set up a website where we can all send his people our ideas about what needs to be done in this country.

Change.gov

Check it out!

Some talking points I thought important to bring up:

• Energy independence, but in a green way. No more mountain-top removal coal mining. No more lies about "clean" coal. No new nuclear power plants. Wind, solar, hydroelectric, tidal, geothermal - FTW!



• Agriculture - NO NAIS! Support for family farms, organic farms, local agriculture projects, education, etc. Down with factory farming!



• Reducing the amount of energy Americans currently consume. More efficient cars. More solar panels on residential, public and business buildings. Clotheslines available for everyone to use, YAY!

Food for thought...

If every American used a clothesline to dry their laundry instead of an electric dryer, we would collectively offset the amount of energy produced by NINE large power plants. ~ Source Project Laundry List

8% - 10% of the average American household's electric bill every month goes to running their dryer. ~ Source Project Laundry List

So do your part if you don't already and start line drying whenever possible instead of using the an electric dryer. It will save you money and save us all a lot of energy.

Clothes lines are easy to install and are inexpensive. Even the most elaborate will pay for itself in electric bill savings within a few months. Indoor drying racks can run anywhere from $10 to $100 depending on the size, what kind of wood it's made from, where it was made (look for "Made in the USA"!) and how sturdy it is. Some look like finished furniture and/or can be hung on a wall of a laundry room, providing shelf space as well as drying space. Most fold away for easy storage in a corner, closet or under the bed.

Clothes lines and indoor air drying racks can be bought at Walmart, most hardware stores, and online from places like Gaiam and Lehman's.

Existing fences and dense shrubbery (like boxwoods!) can also be used as auxillery drying space.

Clothes pins available for retail purchase in the United States are exclusively manufactured in China now. The last of those made in the US were sold last year. However, unused, second-hand and vintage clothes pins can be bought on ebay at inexpensive prices. (Seriously, you'd be surprised...)

I'm sad to say that of the 16 houses on our street, only 4 have clothes lines, including ours. However, two of those clothes lines - including ours - were put up in the past year directly due to the work of Project Laundry List. I love my clothes line.

If you live in an apartment or dormatory and you don't have outdoor drying space, but you want it, petition your landlord or campus authorities to allow for outdoor drying space on the basis that it saves both money and energy. If clothes lines are prohibited in your town/neighborhood, see Project Laundry List for tips about how to secure your right to dry.

Happy Earth Day, everyone!!

I didn't do a thing for it today today, other than tend the garden. But my mom is a science teacher, so she had a great ecological curriculum for today. She taught about the benefits of recycling, hanging laundry to dry outside rather than using a dryer, using reusable bags for groceries rather than paper or plastic, and how solar power works. She said the kids really seemed into it, and she was surprised by the number of kids who said their parents use the reusable bags and hang their laundry out.

Also all the public and charter schools in our county planted at least 38 trees given to them by the forestry service in honor of the 38th Earth Day. Nearly 6,000 trees (FTW! \o/) were planted between 11am - 12pm all over the county by kids and their teachers. Makes me all kinds of happy! The Guinness Book of World Records people were here to monitor the event, and the school system here now holds the record for most trees planted in a day and in a single hour. I hope this becomes a tradition and when they run out of space to plant trees at the schools, they can plant them elsewhere - places where there are erosion problems, etc. - and maybe things other than trees, like mangroves, sea grapes, and sea grasses along the bay and coast to help rebuild the estuaries in Tampa Bay and prevent erosion on the barrier islands, and go on field trips to study various ecosystems and maybe do clean-up projects. That would be cool...

Project Laundry List and National Hanging Out Day

Project Laundry List is trying to get just 1 million people in the US to sign a pledge to hang out laundry 80% of the time by April 19, 2008 (National Haning Out Day). You can go here to print out a copy of the pledge form and send it in.