The world would be an astronomically better place if universities and institutes devoted a large portion of their research budgets to finding ways to convert lint to food, energy, pharmaceuticals and super-materials. Seriously.
I have two lint traps associated with my laundry dryer. One is in the machine. The other is on a box attached to the duct that vents it to the outside world. Both traps catch lint with every wash load. Depending on what was in the load, sometimes it’s only a little lint. Sometimes—particularly if they’re new towels—it’s a lot. Really, really, really a lot. But it’s never nothing.
But wait. There’s more. Below the dryer’s door, there is an interior space in front of the drum. The space is about an inch wide and open at the top. It extends from the bottom of the door to pretty well the bottom of the dryer. Once every year or so I use a chopstick to fish out the large volume of lint that fills up that space. (If there’s another way to get at what’s inside, I don’t know it. There doesn’t seem to be any convenient way of gaining access.)
But wait. There’s still more. There’s a small, circular plate about the diameter of a hockey puck near the back and toward the bottom on the left side of my clothes dryer. (I’m Canadian. I’m required by law to use hockey pucks as the comparative measure for anything circular or cylindrical.)
The plate was secured with clear, heavy shipping tape when it was delivered to me. It remained taped down for a few years.
Then my dryer started to make a large, deep-throated thumping noise. I couldn’t figure out the source, but I thought, “gee, I wonder what’s behind there.” I removed the tape and pried off the plate. Behind it was a cylindrical duct connecting the dryer to the vent.
The internal duct was slightly narrower than the cover over it, but I was able to reach my hand deep into and pull out—you no doubt guessed it—yes, a pipe-clogging load of lint.
The point is, my dryer captures a lot of lint in the traps with every load. And the other lint gathering apparatuses (not their intended purposes) accumulate additional large volumes over time.
Lint Multiplier
I’m a single childless person. I don’t know how families with a number of children can deal with the mountains of lint that their dryers must harvest.
What’s more, new clothes, towels, and linen generate the most lint. But I don’t buy new clothes often because I’m not a slave to fashion. In fact, I spit in the eye of the fashion slave-masters.
Well, not literally spit. That would be an assault and the height of rudeness. Did I mention I’m Canadian? The government will confiscate my passport if I’m not polite. Let’s just say I rhetorically look decidedly askance in the direction of the fashion slave-masters, but in a totally non-confrontational manner.
Plus, I hate shopping. Thoroughly despise it. That includes all shopping, but especially clothes shopping.
In addition, while I don’t mind splurging on myself occasionally, I am one of the cheapest bastards around when it comes to buying stuff that doesn’t bring me any pleasure. Count sartorial splendour among the things that bring me no pleasure.
Thus, I typically buy new clothes only when my current garments are completely threadbare. That can take decades. However, I usually wash shirts, and always underwear and socks, after one wearing. Pants may get worn a several times before washing, but when they start standing on their own two legs I throw them in the washer, then the drier.
How my clothes are able to continually throw off lint with every wash for so many years is beyond me. How a large family of fashionistas manages to get through life without filling up enormous, lint-landfill sites dedicated to just their family is a complete mystery to me.
Put Lint to Work
With a seemingly endlessly renewable supply of lint piling up as a free byproduct of doing our laundry, it’s time to put our lint to work. This is the challenging part.
My motto is, “If it isn’t challenging, count me in. Maybe. But only if I’m caught up on Twitter.”
Because this is challenging, I’ll throw out some ideas here and leave it up to you to follow through. Ideas are, after all, what I’m good at. They’re usually bad, undoable ideas, but, still, I can spew them out with the best of them. And when I say “the best of them” I’m referring to the best of people normally found aimlessly wandering city streets, dribbling from both corners of their mouths, and shouting random obscenities at everyone and no one in a language of their own devising.
But enough about me. Here are some ideas to get started on.
Energy From Lint
According to Wikipedia cotton is 90 percent cellulose and dried hemp is about 57 percent cellulose. Wool is a whole different category and is beyond the scope of this rudimentary analysis because I’m far to lazy to research it further.
The chemical formula of cellulose is (C6H10O5)n. Figure 1 shows a diagram of that chemical formula. Don’t ask me where the C’s are in the diagram. Never mind. Look at the formula instead.
Look at all of those H’s! Those are hydrogen. If you could separate those H’s from the O’s (oxygen, a rather useful byproduct) and C’s (carbon, which you could use to make carbon nanotubes), you could feed that hydrogen into fuel cells to produce electricity.
How, you might ask, can you separate out the hydrogen? How the hell should I know? Who do I look like, Einstein? I came up with the brilliant idea. All you have to do is figure out how to do it.
Food
I can’t tell you how many times in my life I’ve heard and/or read dieticians say we should include a lot of fibre in our diet. Honestly. I can’t tell you. I haven’t a clue how many times it’s been. But it has to be at least two or three times.
As best I can tell from looking at it closely, because I literally don’t have anything better to do with my time, lint seems to be pretty much entirely fibre. Can I say it any clearer? Lint is the perfect food additive. Full of fibre and a free byproduct of doing laundry.
Is lint safe to eat? Again, how the hell should I know? What do I look like, an idiot? I’ve never eaten lint. (In truth, I look much more like an idiot than like Einstein. But I’m still not going to be the first to knowingly consume lint.)
Try it yourself and let me know. Unless of course it kills you, in which case you’re excused from reporting the results of your experiment.
Super-Material From Lint
How the hell lazy are you people? Do I have to spoon-feed you everything? Look back at the “Energy From Lint” section above. Remember me telling you that cellulose—a major component of much our lint—contains a number of carbon atoms. I even told you that if you could extract that carbon you could turn them into carbon nanotubes.
What can you use those carbon nanotubes for? I don’t have to fill in the blanks for you, do I? Well, maybe I do. Think, for example, space elevators!
Jeez. I can’t believe I have to do all this research myself.
Pharmaceuticals
In the opening paragraph I mentioned pharmaceuticals as a potential use for lint. Alright, I’ll admit I just pulled that one out of the air.
I have no idea if there is any potential to turn lint into health products. My best guess is that there isn’t, but I’m sure that won’t stop some maven of modern therapeutical products from being able to market something that makes that claim. ? I wonder what Gwyneth Paltrow is up to these days.
