Are you interested in creating healthier work environments? Using your garment or textile care budget to support truly environmentally friendly services and technology? What about adding an additional item to your checklist for becoming a green hotel?
The Problems with Traditional Dry Cleaning
Able to dissolve most organic materials, perchloroethylene (commonly known as perc or PCE) is the most widely used dry cleaning solvent nationally. It has been estimated by the Environmental Protection Agency that approximately 85 percent of cleaners use PCE as their primary solvent. However, some studies suggest that long-term frequent over-exposure to organic solvents such as PCE may cause lasting and possibly permanent central nervous system effects. Fatigue, lack of muscle coordination, loss of concentration as well as short term memory loss, and personality changes exhibited as nervousness, anxiety or irritability are some of the potential permanent long-term effects of chronic and frequent exposure.
PCE inhaled by pregnant women can cross the placenta, causing exposure to the developing fetus. PCE has also been found in the breast milk of mothers exposed to it. The International Agency for Research on Cancer lists PCE as “Probably carcinogenic to humans.” PCE is also a major contributor to soil and groundwater contamination at dry cleaning shops, mainly due to past unsafe handling practices as well as fugitive emissions.
Wet Cleaning as a Feasible Alternative
Unlike other dry cleaning alternatives that tout being “green,” “organic,” or “environmentally friendly,” the latest wet cleaning technology truly is—and can be used to process those garments previously dry cleaned. The new wet cleaning technology, consisting of a washer, dryer, and tensioning equipment, allows “dry-clean-only” clothes to be washed with water and detergents in computer controlled machines and then finished to a pristine condition.
Wet cleaning is the most environmentally friendly of the feasible alternatives currently being used by the garment care industry. It treats the earth more kindly and there are many other added benefits for the shop. The process no longer generates hazardous waste, there is no regulatory oversight associated with the technology (in most cases, unless a town oversees water discharge rates, or if industrial wastewater from laundry facilities cannot be discharged to septic systems unless a groundwater discharge permit is obtained, like in Massachusetts), and studies have shown that electricity, gas, and even water use is reduced compared to traditional solvent dry cleaning.
How Can the Hotel Industry Help?
In a market-based economy, there are many applicable clichés—“money talks” and “the customer is always right” come to mind. These clichés certainly hold true for the garment cleaning industry. By requesting wet cleaning from your garment cleaning provider, not only do you support healthier work environments for the industry and technology improvements, but you also provide green services for your own staff and guests. The more that customers request wet cleaning, the more the garment care industry will recognize the demand and work to meet that demand by converting to this more earth- and people- friendly technology.
Of course it is important that your and your guest’s garments and textiles come back meeting your high standards. With wet cleaning, the whites come out whiter and the brights brighter—but check it out for yourself by having a discussion with your current cleaner and others you may like to do business with that offer the wet cleaning option.
There are a few things you need to look out for when trying to support the wet cleaning industry. First, shops will try to convince you that they are environmentally friendly when they are using a non-solvent alternative. There are many alternatives to PCE out there that dry cleaners are switching to so that they can market themselves to the eco-conscious. These alternatives include hydrocarbons, silicone and glycol ether-based solvents that come with their own host of health and environmental issues and may not be fully understood or regulated at this point.
Second, a shop may insist they perform wet cleaning, when what they are really referring to is their laundry machine—which is really no different than your home machine. Laundry machines are not well controlled, and cannot boast the high performance required by “dry clean only” clothes cleaned in professional wet cleaning equipment. It is important to follow up with questions about a facility’s equipment including if they use tensioning equipment to finishing the garment care process properly.
For more information, call Joy Onasch at the Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Institute at UMass Lowell at (978) 934-4343, or e-mail her at joy@turi.org.
