In Elena Karpova’s household, the rumbling sound of a clothes dryer has become an unfamiliar noise.
“I use the dryer maybe twice, three times a year, just when it’s an emergency,” says Karpova, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro who studies textile and apparel sustainability.
Instead, Karpova prefers to air dry her clothes. Dryers, she says, are “energy gobblers” and when combined with machine washing too often can wear out clothes much more quickly, in addition to having huge environmental and climate impacts.
