It's the simple things

A recent Wired article describes who some PhD student figured he could make clothes drier by using a simple mixture of common washing powder ingredients to reduce capillary action that causes fibres to hold onto moisture. Turns out that with little effort he was able to make clothes coming out of the washing machine 20% drier. Which means 20% less energy required to dry them. Since clothes drying apparently takes 5.6% of all US energy consumption his simple idea could just shave 1% or more off the total.

Wow.

Now imagine if we all just hung our clothes out to dry on the line?

Yeah I know, we can't do that any more because the air is so filthy clothes would just get dirty before they dried. Besides, so many Americans are just pertrified that pictures of their underwear would appear on Flickr.