July 14th 2008
Laundry Guilt
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wo weeks back, the non-Council entries in the Watcher’s Council reading list included Heavyweight physics prof weighs into climate/energy scrap from The (UK) Register, in which physicist David MacKay pretty much decimated any hopes of a clean, energy efficient world that has a standard of living approximating what we (and I mean that as the big “we,” not just America) are used to. Particularly compelling was this:
Skipping one bath saves a much energy as leaving your TV off standby for over six months. People who wash regularly, wear clean clothes, consume hot food or drink, use powered transport of any kind and live in warm houses have no need to worry about the energy they use to power their electronics; it’s insignificant compared to the other things.
Ever since reading it, looking at our household laundry has depressed me. Being Americans means we are B.O.-adverse (that’s Body Odor, not Barack Obama, but we’re B.O.-adverse in the political sense at the Pearce Plaza, too), so we tend to wash our clothes after one or two wearings, and to get the job done, we use “a witches brew of chemicals,” to lift a phrase from any nearby environmental reporter.
Worse, having had four females in the house, we actually have two sets of washers and dryers, and there have been days when they’ve been working full-time to keep us all looking and smelling like our fine, fine selves.
But now MacKay’s burdened me with laundry guilt. I’m not about to go around like Michael Moore in stained (and I presume smelly) old shirts, so what am I to do?
I have predicted here at C-SM that Greenie hand-wringing about this manner of dread is all for naught; human ingenuity solves all problems, and it certainly should be able to lift laundry depression! And it can! Witness, from Jamie Merrill, writing in The (UK) Independent:
Scientists working for the US military have used self-cleaning fabrics to create T-shirts and underwear that can be worn for weeks without washing. The garments, which use nanoparticles and chemicals to repel water, oil and bacteria, cost £14m to develop and have been licensed to Alexium Group in London for civilian use. Available soon.
Nano-technology to the rescue! We’ll be tossing that washer and dryer in no time! Not only that, but in a household where the female demographic is somewhat overwhelming, we may even by generating our own uniquely feminine power soon. From the same article cited above:
It turns out that the physics of breast motion has been studied closely for the last two decades by a gamut of researchers – most of them women. LaJean Lawson, a former professor of exercise science at Oregon State University, has been researching breast motion since 1985 and now works as a consultant for companies such as Nike to develop better sports-bra designs.
Lawson is enthusiastic about [harnessing breast motion to generate power for a runner's iPod], but warns that it will be tricky to execute. You would need the right breast size and the right material, she explains, and the bra itself would have to be cleverly designed. “It’s just a matter of finding the sweet spot, between reducing motion to the point where it’s comfortable but still allowing enough motion to power your iPod,” she says. Lawson explains that breasts move on three different axes: from side to side, front to back, and up and down. The most motion is generated on the vertical axis. Naturally, the bigger the breast, the more momentum it generates. “Let’s face it – if you’re a double-A marathoner, you’re probably not going to get that iPod up and running,” Lawson says.
Here’s an idea that could work particularly well in SoCal, land of breast enhancement, since we learn that a D-cup in a bra with low-support characteristics (the kind preferred by most men, but shunned for some reason by most women) can travel as much as 35 inches up and down during an exercise session, while a B-cup in a high-support bra barely moves an inch.
Perhaps Congress could pass a law giving an energy tax credit to women who upsize their chestal region.
Sophomoric humor aside, all this is why I’m an optimist instead of a screaming banshee of doom. God gave the human mind an nearly infinite capacity to be curious and to solve problems. We haven’t even convinced ourselves that global warming is a problem, but already we’re recruiting permanently clean skivvies and juice-generating bras into the solution!
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Posted in Alternative Energy, Energy Policy, Environmentalism, Global warming | 3 Comments » | 
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July 16th, 2008 at 10:44 am
July 17th, 2008 at 3:25 am
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July 15th, 2008 at 10:08 am
I read a few weeks ago that scientists in the UK have also invented a washing machine that, relying on bizarre plastic pellets, can wash a load of laundry using only .5 cup of water. Of course, given British standards of cleanliness, I’ll reserve judgment pending its hitting the market.