--- title: Five Best: Why the Dry-Cleaning Industry is Drying Up description: Why the dry-cleaning industry is drying up, did gerrymandering help polarize American politics and more. canonical: https://time.com/5207018/why-the-dry-cleaning-industry-is-drying-up/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-03-20T16:00:08.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:57:59.550Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Why the Dry-Cleaning Industry is Drying Up og:description: And four more of today's best ideas og:url: https://time.com/5207018/why-the-dry-cleaning-industry-is-drying-up/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why the Dry-Cleaning Industry is Drying Up twitter:description: And four more of today's best ideas twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Why the Dry-Cleaning Industry is Drying Up by [The Aspen Institute](https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/) ## The Aspen Institute Mar 20, 2018 4:00 PM UTC by [The Aspen Institute](https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/) ## The Aspen Institute Mar 20, 2018 4:00 PM UTC **1\.** [**Why the dry-cleaning industry is drying up.**](https://www.racked.com/2018/3/19/17073004/dry-cleaning-decline) By Allie Volpe at _Racked_ **2\.** [**Did gerrymandering help polarize American politics?**](https://daily.jstor.org/is-gerrymandering-to-blame-for-our-polarized-politics/) By Peter Feuerherd in _JSTOR Daily_ **3\.** [**Why didn’t environmentalists sound the alarm about natural gas?**](https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-climate-activists-failed-to-make-clear-the-problem-with-natural-gas-mckibben) By Bill McKibben in _Yale Environment 360_ **4\.** [**How a long line of ‘worst-case scenarios’ at Facebook put our privacy at risk.**](https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/18/move-fast-and-fake-things/) By Josh Constine in _TechCrunch_ **5\.** [**There’s another opioid crisis: Shortages are causing medical mistakes and unmanaged pain.**](https://khn.org/news/the-other-opioid-crisis-hospital-shortages-lead-to-patient-pain-medical-errors/) By Pauline Bartolone at _Kaiser Health News_  [_The Aspen Institute_](http://www.aspeninstitute.org/) _is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5207018/why-the-dry-cleaning-industry-is-drying-up/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5207018/why-the-dry-cleaning-industry-is-drying-up/"},"headline":"Why the Dry-Cleaning Industry is Drying Up","datePublished":"2018-03-20T16:00:08.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:57:59.550Z","description":"These are today's best ideas","url":"https://time.com/5207018/why-the-dry-cleaning-industry-is-drying-up/","keywords":["Five Best Ideas","Innovation","facebook","Natural gas","opioids","Clothing"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"The Aspen Institute","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/five-best-ideas/","name":"Five Best Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5207018/why-the-dry-cleaning-industry-is-drying-up/","name":"Why the Dry-Cleaning Industry is Drying Up"}}]}] ```