Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

SweetAlyssumm t1_iqqru8y wrote

Reply to comment by HipHopGrandpa in My mother's ~33 year old Whirlpool dryer. Still works amazing! by vocke

It rarely makes sense to throw away a working appliance to save something on power. Environmentally it is a negative. My dryer is 21 years old (similar model) and I'm not going to replace it to save 10 bucks a month on power. Of course my power is cheaper in the US than in Europe.

41

skarn86 t1_irdvs9i wrote

It is absolutely not a negative, environmentally of financially if you bother to do a little math.

10 bucks a month is 120 a year and it very quickly adds up to the cost of a new dryer.

About environment, it's tricky to find data on te costs of building a new dryer. But just look at the CO2 footprint of the EU. It's been dropping for decades, and it's not because people stopped using appliances. Simply the efficiency of new appliances has outpaced the impact of producing them.

And all that while Eastern Europe has been growing massively after the fall of the USSR.

Energy efficiency matters a lot. Just try and look into it a little.

And yes, the carbon footprint of the EU has been dropping even after you factor in how much production happens in China.

5

SweetAlyssumm t1_irezb24 wrote

Thanks for these thoughts. It's hard to measure environmental impact. But aggregate numbers say nothing about my individual dryer. Adding the risk that I will buy a dryer that will not last as long as my current one. There are many reasons the footprint is reduced in Europe that have nothing to do with home appliances. Industry/transport are the big numbers. And there are costs for putting appliances in landfills. The delta between my dryer and a new one might be rather small. Just because something is an improvement does not mean it's a big improvement. A new dryer in the US comparable to what I have is about $900. I don't think 8 years is quickly!

1