AS A BUDDING undergraduate environmentalist 12 years ago, Alex Lee became inspired to encourage people to air-dry their clothes. It was the beginning of what would eventually be called Project Laundry List.

For the past five years, Lee, chairman of the Concord City Democrats, has run a website for the group at laundrylist.org. This spring, as climate change has drawn more attention, traffic on Lee's site has exploded. Over the past month, he's been featured in articles around the world, from The New York Times to Austria's Wiener Zeitung. Among the site's projects are an effort to get weathermen to forecast air-drying conditions - called "Eye on the Line" - and an initiative to rescind clothesline bans in towns and neighborhood associations.

What are you up to? I don't know if you know how much press I've gotten, but I'm like an international star.

What's the case for clotheslines? Well, they make your clothes last longer and smell better. . . . And it saves the average American family somewhere between $80 and $100 a year. And the average dryer emits 1,516 pounds of carbon dioxide every year.

Do you air-dry everything? I sure do. I mean, I'm not a zealot, and we don't want to preach. There are times when it's just impractical, like after a week of rain. I actually didn't use a dryer last week because it was right around national Hanging Out Day and I didn't want to get caught.

When did attention sort of pick up? It started on the 31st. It picked up in Canada, and then when The New York Times article was published, it took off worldwide . . . China, Austria, Germany. It's all been: "What are these people in the United States thinking? Why do they ban the clothesline?"

What are the project's other initiatives? We do a lot with art, because we think that hanging up clothes is beautiful.

LAUREN R. DORGAN