As the manager of your property, you know every inch of it. That’s helped you identify key areas where green practices can be employed to save the facility in expenses and create a better feeling for guests staying on the property. Now be honest, have you taken a close look at your laundry? Have you talked with your chemical company representatives and equipment distributor to assess how the laundry’s setup and practices mesh with your green focus?
Take a moment to think about how many hours your laundry operates. I suggest even stopping in and taking a look at the equipment. Doing the math in your head, it’s easy to see how little tweaks to the water usage in your 60-pound washer-extractor multiplied by the number of loads per day, week, month can add up to big savings and a green approach that gels with your property’s overall commitment. But where to begin?
First, investigate your wash programs. Are you using a prewash for all loads? If you are, you’re not quite as environmentally friendly as you think, as you are using 15 to 25 percent more water with each cycle. Prewash steps should be reserved only for heavy-soil loads. How often are bleach baths used? These steps can add 15 percent more water to the cycle. And because it’s usually a hot water fill, you’ve now used more energy to heat the water.
Work with Chemical Supplier
Washer programming most often is performed by your chemical company representative. It’s essential that hotel staff work closely with this professional to ensure resources are not being wasted. Understand that washer programming is the biggest variable in how much water and energy your washer-extractor will consume.
Continuing with the washer-extractor topic, how many programmable water levels do your machines have? Many laundries are still using washer-extractors with just three options. However, manufacturers are marketing washers boasting controls offering 20 or even 30 programmable levels. Sound like overkill? When you consider that if you can fine-tune even a gallon or two out of select cycles and multiply the savings by the number of daily loads, these seemingly small tweaks can translate into savings of tens of thousands of gallons of water annually. Now we’re getting greener. If even a small percentage of those savings is hot water, we’ve got utility savings and even more green.
If you are ready to run out and upgrade your equipment tomorrow, be weary of sales persons touting, “I can save you 50 percent in water.” At best, most of the equipment on the market will save in the area of about 10 percent. While their claims of higher percentages in savings may be technically true, they are sacrificing a great deal of wash quality. I think we all can agree the greenest approach is best, but we also have a laundry to thoroughly clean our linens and present our guests the highest finished quality.
Having trimmed hot water consumption by adjusting programming and water levels, your drying tumblers will be the next area to study for energy reductions. Hot water heaters and drying tumblers are a laundry’s largest energy consumers, and energy accounts for 15 percent of the cost to run a laundry.
Avoid Unnecessary Overdrying
In reviewing your drying efficiency, make sure overdrying is not part of the standard operating procedure. Drying can be a bit of a moving target for laundries, with many operations overdrying linens. The quickest and easiest way to cut your drying time is with high G-force extraction washer-extractors. Moving from an 86 G-force cycle to 300 G-force can reduce drying times by more than 30 percent.
If you’re in the market to upgrade a drying tumbler, remember that a balance of heat, tumble action and airflow will produce the fastest and most efficient drying results. High Btus alone do not guarantee the fastest drying. You might be thinking, my tumbler has offered 20 years of worry-free service and we aren’t ready to abandon it yet. Well, consider that tumblers account for 70 percent of all energy consumption in the laundry. Recouping purchase costs by replacing an old, inefficient unit may not take as long as you think.
I believe a greener laundry starts with communication between all parties—general manager, laundry manager, equipment distributor, chemical supplier and laundry staff. It requires all to design a plan that meets the daily throughput requirements and quality standards while conserving resources. Small changes can lead to big savings and a greener operation overall.
Kim Shady, vice president of distributor sales for UniMac, has worked in the commercial laundry industry for more than 20 years. Owned by Alliance Laundry Systems, UniMac offers an industrial line of on-premises laundry equipment designed for efficiency and durability.
