Green Laundry

So a great way to still be environmental while we wear our not so sustainable wardrobe, is to make smart choices when we clean our cloths. Besides the advice we've all heard about doing full loads and washing on cold to save energy, we can also push our local dry cleaning industry to go green too.

Dry-cleaning uses chemicals that are solvent-based and harmful to the environment. The primary solvent, perchloroethylene, that is used in the process is a classified "probable carcinogen" by the EPA. Which means it's bad for your health and for the environment.

A few new processes that can replace dry-cleaning are becoming more available. One is called "wet cleaning" by "Miele" a German made processing unit that "wet cleans" the garments using perfectly balanced soaps and water. It is gentler than hand cleaning, can remove stains that dry-cleaning can't and is approved by more and more garment manufacturers on their dry-clean only garments. Fabrics that can be washed using the Miele wet cleaning process include wools, cashmere, silks, wedding dresses, laces, rayon and more.

Another dry-cleaning replacement is C02 dry cleaning which uses liquid carbon dioxide instead of perchloroethylene. The liquid carbon dioxide is combined with recyclable cleaning agents and is exposed to the garments during the cleaning process. Then the machine pulls the mixture away from the cloths leaving them clean while the solutions are reused. Because heat is not used, the process is gentler on the cloths and more energy efficient.