How much is drying your clothes costing you?

The cost of living in the UK is getting more and more expensive as gas and electricity bills increase too record highs.   So, why on the rare occasions when Britain has sunshine, do people still choose to use the tumble dryer to dry the clothes?

Recent surveys show almost half of the households in the UK own a dryer and that number is slowly rising.  At the moment the UK spends over £405M annually just running the dryer as well as releasing 6,412,500,000 Kg of co2 into the atmosphere a year. The rest of Europe is not that much better. Low estimates suggest that Europe is producing 74,600,000 tons of co2 a year just from electric clothes dryers!

The States however is way ahead of us in their dryer usage.  The USA is having a love affair with the electric clothes dryer, with approximately 79% of households owning a dryer.  America accounts for roughly 25% of the world’s energy consumption but can a small change like using the clothes line really help?

In the US, around 55,562,027 tons of co2 is released into the atmosphere each year directly due to electric clothes dryers, with some estimates suggesting it is costing US households around $12,000,000,000 a year in energy bills.

As energy consumption rises and the amount of coal, gas and oil is depleted, costs will continue to rise for the average household, it’s a basic supply and demand equation.  It must make sense to dry clothes naturally to save our own cash and help ensure that the environment is protected, after all, why pay to do something which is free!

Click the link below to see our calculations. This is a draft copy so its a little messy…
maths_and_data

By Tim Dare.