Best Eco-Friendly Clothes Dryers of 2025

CR’s Green Choice program assesses a product’s environmental impact throughout its life cycle—from manufacture to distribution, use, and eventual disposal. Green leaf products attain Green Choice scores if they’re in the top 20 percent of those evaluated.

Currently, the data is recalculated once a year to reassess the performance of existing models and add new models to the program. As more eco-friendly products enter the market, some models identified as Green Choice may lose that designation as other more environmentally friendly models take their place.

Whether a dryer gets a green leaf depends on a variety of key environment-related factors—both major (energy use, drying performance, product design, country of manufacture) and minor (reliability, price and warranty, materials, and special eco-friendly features like moisture sensors). Here’s how we calculate a Green Choice score:

• Drying performance: We consider each dryer’s score in our performance tests, which evaluate how well it dries laundry loads of varying weights and fabrics.
• Energy use: We calculate how much electricity and/or gas is needed for the dryer to complete a load.
• Where it’s made: We look at where an appliance is manufactured to estimate the environmental toll of transporting it to the American market. Machines made in North America get a higher score.
• Brand reliability: We use our brand reliability scores to determine which dryers remain in service longer. Longer-lasting machines minimize waste and demand for new resources.
• Automatic moisture sensors: This feature enhances efficiency by preventing over-drying, thereby saving energy and extending the lifespan of garments.
• Drum material: We consider whether the product has a stainless steel drum, which would typically last longer than a porcelain-coated or aluminum alloy drum.
• Price and warranty: Dryers sell for about $450 to $2,300 depending on the type, capacity, efficiency, and features. But most range from $600 to $1,400 and come with a one-year warranty on parts and labor. (Speed Queen is an exception, with warranties of five to seven years.) Our Green Choice calculation gives added weight to models that are economical and have longer warranties.

“By focusing on these aspects, clothes dryers can significantly contribute to a more sustainable household, balancing functionality with environmental responsibility,” Whitehurst says. “Further, the life cycle of a clothes dryer can be managed to promote environmental sustainability, ensuring a lower impact on natural resources and ecosystems.”

Dryers are among the costliest energy-consuming appliances in a household, representing 3.3 percent of total U.S. residential energy use, according to the Department of Energy. Per unit, electric dryers consume about 782 kilowatt hours each year while gas dryers use about 2.28 million Btu a year, according to DOE data.

That doesn’t count other environmental factors, including the resources required to build and ship them, the carbon cost of transporting them to stores and delivering them to consumers, and the pileup of discarded appliances in landfills.

The DOE recently rolled back new washer and dryer efficiency standards that were projected to save American households $2.2 billion per year on their utility bills (an 11 percent energy savings), while significantly cutting energy waste and harmful carbon pollution. CR supported those new regulations (scheduled to take effect in 2028) as a win-win for American consumers.

“Though efficiency standards may be rolled back, consumers can depend on CR’s trusted voice and Green Choice to break through the noise and provide dryer recommendations that use less energy and are better for the environment,” Whitehurst says.

The good news is that more Energy Star certified dryers—which use 20 percent less energy than standard dryers—have flooded the market in recent years. According to Energy Star, if all the dryers in America’s homes were Energy Star certified, consumers could collectively save more than $1.5 billion per year in utility costs and prevent greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to that from more than 2 million vehicles. You can find Energy Star certified products and energy rebate offers at Energystar.gov.

The bad news is that without stricter standards, lower-tier appliances will continue to waste energy. “The challenge is, how do you eliminate the lower-performing appliances altogether and get manufacturers to raise the bar on their appliances and stop passing the costs onto the consumer?” Whitehurst says.