Conservation chief wants clothesline ban rescinded
Last Updated: Thursday, November 8, 2007 | 8:51 AM ET
CBC News
Ontario's chief energy conservation officer wants more people to be able to legally hang their clothes out to dry.
Peter Love released a dozen recommendations on Wednesday that he says would cut down on energy use in the province.
One of them is a proposal for a provincial regulation that would end the ban on outdoor clotheslines in some subdivisions.
"We know that people have electric clothes dryers. And we know that some of those are on during the middle of the summer. And we know that there is an alternative that requires no energy," Love said.
"And there are a number of subdivisions across Ontario where it is illegal for people to put their clothes out on a clothesline. So I think it sends a very wrong message. And it's one that I'm looking to have eliminated."
Love said the regulation should also end the ban on roof-top solar panels in some subdivisions.
Earlier this year, the mayor of Aurora pushed the Ontario government to consider passing a regulation that would allow her constituents to override subdivision property agreements that prevent homeowners from hanging their laundry out to dry.
"They could designate the humble clothesline as a good, a service or a technology," Phyllis Morris said at the time, noting that the Energy Conservation Leadership Act allows the government to help remove barriers that block energy conservation.
Morris launched her Right to Dry campaign in August and said the government should consider the energy savings that clotheslines offer.
The Conservation Council of Ontario and the World Wildlife Fund of Canada have endorsed the campaign.
The Ontario Ministry of the Environment says that a standard clothes dryer consumes 900 kilowatt hours of energy per year, creating up to 840 kilograms of air pollution and greenhouse gases.
Some homeowners in new subdivisions throughout Ontario are barred under the terms of their purchase agreements from hanging laundry outside.
