Project Laundry List
We want to make the solar clothes dryer (clotheslines) and cold water washing acceptable and desirable in America through social marketing and the application of behavioral economics. We want people to wash their clothes less, make wrinkles cool again, and transform the clothing care cycle.
About You
Section 1: You
First Name
Alexander
Last Name
Lee
Website URL
Organization
Project Laundry List
Country
United States
Section 2: Your Organization
Organization Name
Project Laundry List
Organization Website
Organization Phone
603-226-3098
Organization Address
27 Holly St, Suite A, Concord, NH 03301
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
Organization Country
United States, NH
Your idea
Name Your Project
Project Laundry List
Country and state your work focuses on
United States, NH
Describe Your Idea
We want to make the solar clothes dryer (clotheslines) and cold water washing acceptable and desirable in America through social marketing and the application of behavioral economics. We want people to wash their clothes less, make wrinkles cool again, and transform the clothing care cycle.
Website URL
Innovation
What makes your idea unique?
We involve artists and businesses in a social capital building activity that builds relationships; promotes an activity that addresses the intersecting crises of personal finance, energy security, and climate change; and also encourages people to get sunshine, exercise, and meet their neighbors, perhaps reducing depression, stress, and obesity.
We do not concern ourselves with the UN and the US Congress or stake our hopes on innovations in technology, like clean nuclear, clean coal, or wind turbines. Rather, we concentrate on innovations in social policy and behavior that will improve our quality of life, such as a shortened work week that will give people more time to hang.
We connect with people using an olfactory and tactile activity that evokes strong emotional responses, like nostalgia, to engage them in a larger conversation about our future.
The clothing care cycle is a gateway activity to greener living.
Do you have a patent for this idea?
No
Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
What impact have you had?
Since April 2007, Project Laundry List has enjoyed unprecedented media attention as the central organizing force of the “right to dry” movement. Articles discussing this critical role have appeared eight times in the New York Times, twice on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, in USA Today, the Boston Globe, Time, Reuters (most emailed on Yahoo! for several hours), The Baltimore Sun, Home Power Magazine, and over a hundred other local and international newspapers. Alexander Lee, our Executive Director, has been the subject of numerous feature articles in publications like the ABA Journal, Grist, Sierra (magazine of the Sierra Club), The Rutland Herald, and Homepower Magazine. In addition, our work has been central to stories on ABC WorldNews, CBS Sunday Morning Show, and in seven-minute TV segments in Japan, Germany, and South Korea.
In 2008 and 2009, passage of “right to dry” legislation in Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, and Vermont, together with legislative efforts on this front in Connecticut, Oregon, North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, Nebraska, and New
Hampshire, were largely attributed to Project Laundry List’s ongoing efforts.
Problem
About eighty to ninety percent of Americans regularly use the dryer leading to major energy consumption and carbon emissions.
Americans take an average of about 13 days paid vacation time. People
feel like they do not have time to do anything, even the laundry.
Major Depressive Disorder is the leading cause of disability in the U.S. for ages 15-44, affecting approximately 14.8 million American adults, or about 6.7% of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year. Some clinical psychologists have concluded that stimulating the “effort driven reward circuit” with hands-on physical activitiesthat yield tangible rewards, like line drying, builds resilience against depression.
According to the CDC, American society has become 'obesogenic'. Policy and environmental change initiatives that make healthy choices in nutrition and physical activity available, affordable, and easy will likely prove most effective in combating obesity. Line drying is one such activity.
Actions
We have a wide array of advocacy and education programs outlined in our strategic plan that include working at the local level, on college campuses, and in the media to change public perceptions of line drying.
We also lay out the organizational challenges that Project Laundry List faces. We are currently working with a web designer and two Joomla/CiviCRM experts to re-launch our web presence in a way that more effectively handles data.
Results
As a result of our work, 60 million people previously unfamiliar with the benefits of air-drying laundry will have been introduced to and educated about these benefits.
Project Laundry List will increase the number of “converted” people who are air-drying by reducing barriers to drying.
Through Project Laundry Lists’ advocacy, the environmental impact of the industries and products related to doing laundry (detergent, energy use for hot water, etc.) will have been quantifiably reduced.
Project Laundry List will have sufficient revenue to sustain the staff and activity level necessary to meet its mission-based goals.
The Project Laundry List board will have sufficient quality knowledge, systems and practices to effectively manage our governance and direction.
Project Laundry List will have a system for selling goods that a) allows it to routinely achieve net revenue goals from sales and b) does not detract from other mission-based work. Project Laundry List will have a fundraising system that allows it to predictably meet its revenue goals.
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Please address each year separately, if possible.
An infusion of money and management talent that keeps pace with our media success and effective policy advocacy will allow us to succeed in the year ahead. This will allow us to make existing programs more robust in year two and expand to new clothing care topics in the third year. Additionally, if the documentary that is being made about our work and mission is a success, we will be able to leverage that in year two and three to reach more people.
Ultimately, we would like to find a way to re-introduce an American-manufactured wooden clothespin to the market.
What would prevent your project from being a success?
If we are not able to overcome our staffing and management issues and are not able to effectively solve the back-end website issues, we will be overwhelmed by the onslaught of requests and fall further and further behind.
How many people will your project serve annually?
1001‐10,000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
Less than $50
Does your project seek to have an impact on public policy?
Yes
Sustainability
What stage is your project in?
Operating for more than 5 years
In what country?
United States, NH
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
Yes
If yes, provide organization name.
Project Laundry List
How long has this organization been operating?
More than 5 years
Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with businesses?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with government?
Yes
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.
We work with Orion Grassroots Network, the NH Department of Environmental Services, Seventh Generation, the CLEAN, and dozens of other organizations and coalitions. These organizations and coalitions help us to spread the word about what we do, effectively navigate bureaucracies, and promote our message to a wider audience.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization?
We need a financial investment in staff and infrastructure to make this project sustainable.
We need a CFO/COO to help us with the management of our drying rack and clothesline sales, with volunteer and staff management, and relieve some of the "administrivia" burden that our Executive Director currently shoulders.
We need to overhaul the backend of our website. The current set-up has multiple applications to manage with no integration or central reporting capability. We would like to move to a single registration with a single application in the backend.
The Story
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
In 1995, Helen Caldicott, MD, gave a speech at a peace symposium that I organized as an undergraduate at Middlebury College. In that speech, she said, "If we all did things like hang out our clothes, we could shut down the nuclear industry." My mother was a frugal Yankee housewife who loved her clotheslines and I was the head of the environmental group. I have been pushing this idea ever since. This seemed like a hyper-logical connection between the demand-side and the supply-side or, put more simply, the clothesline seemed like a perfect symbol for showing people that we build power plants because we demand energy...and not everything we use energy for makes sense.
Tell us about the social innovator behind this idea.
Alexander Lee lives in Concord, NH. As a result of his work with Project Laundry List, he has appeared on CBS Morning Show, ABC News, FOX, and many local TV and radio stations. He has been quoted in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, USA Today and hundreds of other newspapers and magazines. Has been the subject of profiles in Sierra, the ABA Journal, Home Power Magazine, and Middlebury Magazine, among dozens of other publications.
After graduating from Vermont Law School in May of 2001, he was Assistant to the Commissioners at the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission, where he worked on rolling out utility-managed energy efficiency programs. Mr. Lee also served as staff co-chair of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners' (NARUC) Committee on Energy Resources & the Environment.
He did his undergraduate work at Middlebury College, studying at the Center for Northern Studies and participating in Green Corps' Environmental Organizing Semester at the University of Montana-Missoula. He is also a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.
While in law school, he worked for the Vermont Secretary of State on political redistricting. His writing has been published in such places as The Catholic Worker and the Albany Law Environmental Outlook Journal. For several years, Mr. Lee has led a group of teenagers on four week canoe trips in Northern Quebec. He loves to cook and cross-country ski in his free time.
Mr. Lee has also been heavily involved in campaign finance reform, acting as the chair of Granny D's organization
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Personal contact at Changemakers
If through another, please provide the name of the organization or company
Received a call from Sarah Mintz
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