Health & Well-Being 5 - Natural Awakenings

greenliving
A GREENER
WAY TO
DRY CLEAN
New Eco-Friendly
Methods Help the Planet
by Brita Belli
It makes no sense. First, there are the
harsh chemicals used to clean the
clothes. Most facilities continue to
use PERC (short for percholorethylene),
a suspected carcinogen that is released
in cleaners’ airborne emissions, from
where it can eventually contaminate
soil and groundwater. With as many as
35,000 dry cleaning facilities nationwide,
this poses a major public health
and environmental concern.
Additional commonly used drycleaning
chemicals with toxic repercussions
include petroleum-based
solvents like Pure Dry, EcoSolve, and
GreenEarth, a silicone-based solvent
that breaks down into sand, water and
carbon dioxide.
Beyond the chemicals, standard
dry-cleaning practices come with lots
of built-in waste; the most obvious
being the ubiquitous plastic garment
covers and disposable hangers.
A New Era
Aware of their planet-harming public
image, dry cleaners, many of which
are small, family-owned businesses,
have set out to reinvent themselves in
recent years. Unfortunately, some-
times this involves little more than
adding the word “organic” or
“green” to a company’s name.
To be clear, customers must
inquire whether or not
a particular cleaner
uses PERC or one of
the other harmful
chemicals to determine
if a greensounding
name
has merit.
The good
news is that
more dry
cleaners across
the country are
actually shifting to
alternative cleaning
methods that leave
less impact on the
environment. A new certification
agency called the Green Cleaners
Council (GCC) is helping to lend
weight to a cleaner’s green claims.
Fresh Technologies
One alternative to traditional drycleaning,
known as CO 2 cleaning, uses
liquid carbon dioxide—the type used to
carbonate soda—as its active solvent,
mixed with dry cleaning detergent.
During the cleaning process, the excess
CO 2 released is captured and reused.
Even better, an Environmental Protection
Agency-approved wet cleaning
method uses water and “environmentally
preferable detergents” to safely
clean delicate clothes, and emits no air
pollution, nor does it leave hazardous
waste behind. The only negative environmental
impact with this approach is
the use of additional water.
The EPA estimates that 10 percent
of the industry has shifted to wet
cleaning, a number that’s on the rise.
Intriguingly, all cleaners have the capacity
to wet clean at least some items
using existing equipment, the agency
reports, and some 3,000 establishments
are likely offering some degree of wet
cleaning (based on equipment sales).
Ann Hargrove has the distinction
of operating the first wet cleaning business
in the United States. Today, she is
36 Chicago North & North Shore www.NAChicagoNorth.com
a member of the GCC, providing the
environmental certification the industry
has lacked. Much like other green
standards groups, the council rates dry
cleaners based on a long list of environmental
attributes. After verifying claims,
the council awards cleaners between
one and five leaves, based on their
green credibility.
“The nice part about what we’re
doing,” says Hargrove, “is that once
cleaners fill out the form, we give them
their ratings and give them an itemized
list: ‘Here are some things you can do.’”
She says no cleaner can earn a fiveleaf
rating while using PERC, but adds
that new equipment is expensive and
smaller steps deserve recognition, too.
The GCC website offers a state-by-state
listing of its certified green cleaners—yet
many states still have none listed. The
EPA provides another, more comprehensive,
greener cleaners guide, which lists
CO 2 cleaners and wet cleaners by state.
A Florida-based company, Sudsies,
exemplifies the kind of entrepreneurs
who have taken up the green
cleaning challenge. It has earned a
four-leaf rating by offering wet cleaning
and instituting a recycling program
(Sudsies.com).
“We use plastic hangers made
from recycled plastic that can also
be recycled,” says Sudsies CEO Jason
Loeb. The company also has reduced
paper and plastic bag use and prints its
brochures on recycled paper.
With the economy down, Loeb says
it’s a tough time for the industry to take
major green steps, so incremental ones
may be the order of the day. He observes,
“For now, most of those with the
time and money to invest in eco-friendly
practices limit their investment to the
use of a particular dry cleaning solvent,
rather than moving to evaluate all areas
of their environmental impact.”
The Green Cleaners Council’s mission
to evaluate more cleaners should
spark more widespread interest while
helping customers to readily differentiate
the green-in-name-only cleaners
from those committed to cleaning
clothes in a whole new way. It’s up to
us to create demand.
Brita Belli is the editor of E – The
Environmental Magazine.