In the Philippines, laundry practices fall into two camps: urban and rural. In the rural provinces, in many villages, laundry day happens each week by the river, it’s done by hand, and it’s a communal activity. Any technology that makes clean water easier to access can be a huge step. A covered area with a communal basin and fresh spring water makes laundry and cooking much easier. With the country’s 7,000 islands and numerous villages, building basic rural water infrastructure is an ongoing challenge.

In the cities, laundry has historically been done by hand, and only in the past couple decades have home washing machines become prominent. Today in Manila, most middle-class homes have washing machines and “house help” — young women from the provinces who live with Manilan families and handle domestic tasks. Often they are treated like an extension of the family, working for the same house for many years at a time. Apart from room and board, they make about US$80 per month, often sending money back home to their families.

Clothes dryers are rare in the Philippines. It’s always hot outside, and people opt to line dry. My Filipino friend considers line drying superior because the UV light kills germs more effectively. This is crucial in the tropics, which lack the public health benefit of a cold winter.

In stark contrast, many American homeowners associations have banned the use of outdoor clotheslines entirely. The sight of drying clothes is viewed as an eyesore or a marker of poverty that lowers property values. San Francisco had a ban on clotheslines until October, 2015. Thanks to a recent Right to Dry movement, California and some other states have repealed these bans.

Laundromats in the Philippines are a mix of home-based businesses, with one or two washing machines and family members helping out, and laundry chains. Self-service, coin operated laundromats are virtually nonexistent, but there are some bigger modern facilities doing larger-scale laundering. (Manila’s first commercial laundry began in 1946 when Dominador S. Asis, Sr. purchased a US field laundry trailer from the departing American troops.)

Returning to my friend’s question about how Americans find the time to do laundry, the answer is: we do it because it’s the most economical and time-efficient way. Laundry in my home of two takes about 25 minutes per week. For 7 kilos of laundry, I would spend US$35 for wash-and-fold with pickup and delivery, using Washio in San Francisco. For that to be reasonable, my 25 minutes would have to valued at about US$85/hour. And I’d be giving up the therapeutic nature of the activity. So, I’m happy to keep the money. (If I opt to line dry, it adds about 6 minutes per load, bringing the hourly rate down to US$68/hour.)

In the Philippines, that same 7 kilos of laundry can be picked up, washed and folded, and delivered for around US$4.30. So, for many people in Manila, it makes sense.

So, we end up here: Nearly every house on my block has a washing machine and a clothes dryer, and they are all idle more than 99% of the time. I think we have reached a local maxima in the efficiency of these appliances. Per pound of laundry, large-scale tunnel washers use less than half of the water required by the best high-efficiency home washing machines available. If all our laundry went through tunnel washers, the US would save at least 3 billion gallons of water per week.*

There are big logistical barriers to building such a system in the US. Autonomous vehicles may help — I can imagine a laundry car that runs around doing pickups and deliveries of personal laundry, finally making it as simple and affordable as using your own machine at home. But there are cultural barriers: We like doing our laundry in private. We don’t like the idea of strangers handling our clothes — clean or dirty. I think many of us see our clothes as an extension of our bodies, so it makes us uneasy. And for me, there’s a pleasant intimacy in folding warm clothes and putting them away. There’s a quiet moment after the dryer stops. No phone, no laptop. Just me and the clothes. If I gave that up, I would want to replace it with something as meditative.

Another huge barrier for us is density. The most dense US city is half as dense as Metro Manila. American low-density suburban housing makes it a hassle to share resources with neighbors. And Manila’s urban density affords many efficiencies. And while more efficient laundry may not be the lowest-hanging fruit with regard to climate change, I think it’s just one example among many in which low-density living is a barrier in tackling climate change.

For me, for now, I will incorporate line drying into my routine at least some of the time, and I hope I will learn to make it an enjoyable ritual — a moment of contemplation in the warm sun.

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