What is ‘green’?

I happened to be parked near the rear of a bus depot recently. It ran one one of those super modern fleets of busses that proudly proclaimed that they are all electric and ‘green and clean’ and it made me wonder how they could justify making this claim or was it just a ploy to get environmentally aware passenger to choose one of their busses than a rival’s diesel bus?

I looked at one of the buses from a distance and concluded that it made sense when replacing a time-served diesel engine but, it required a great deal of energy to produce the metal to make a vehicle of this size. I thought about those giant tyres made of rubber, both natural rubber from trees and synthetic rubber, steel, textile, silica and so on. I did not think too much about the huge electric batteries required to power this vehicle as I do not know how green the manufacturing process is, but what struck me was that this vehicle (and I admit to being a petrol head) was not as green as it seemed and proclaimed to the world to be.

I am a motoring enthusiast and absolutely behind investigation of new technologies, but what made me shake my head was that the bus was having its batteries re-charged by a huge diesel generator.

What has that got to do with the textile care industry you might ask? Well, actually quite a bit because it reminded me of those textile care cleaners, and I’m afraid I mean thiose who use publicity claiming that their business is green and anyone who uses solvents is not only killing the planet, but using carcinogenic methods of cleaning which as well as harming health, are also harsh on clothes.

I have never felt comfortable with this type of thinking and here is why. In an already damaged industry that has tried to withstand not only a massive reduction in the formal wear side of the business, but a Pandemic, unaffordable rising costs, rents, and taxes and many other factors it is not a good thing to be seen attacking fellow businesses in the same industry who choose to use different cleaning methods. This is short sighted and can at some future date spectacularly backfire. Just look how everyone was told by the Government to get rid of their petrol cars and buy diesel cars.

I would like to state here that I chose both solvent cleaning and wetcleaning as side by side processing options for my business. The Wetcleaning v Drycleaning debate rages on regardless, so here is my penny’s worth.

• Wetcleaners argue that cleaning in solvent is carcinogenic and dangerous to humans, but the ppm levels and sophistication of drycleaning machines that use solvents is so well controlled that it is probably more harmful walking down a city street than it is walking past a drycleaning machine while a load is being emptied.
• More people have drowned in water than in solvents.
• Cleaning in solvents is no more harmful to garments designed for the process than wetcleaning is. Both cleaning mediums make a great choice as side by side options.
• In solvent cleaning, the solvent is distilled and reused and reused again, in wetcleaning the cleaning medium is used once then sent down the waste pipes.
• Wet cleaning produces great results on a whole range of cleaning but you need to have really good finishing equipment.
• Drycleaners using solvent, including the large chains, often found that an ironing table and a steam formatter was all the equipment that they needed.
• Who uses the most power - those with a whole host of finishing equipment or those with just a couple of bits, and who is greener?

The message of this article is simple. Let jus all work together to ensure the survival of the industry. And let’s never bad mouth or make claims about a competitor’s quality of cleaning because of their chosen method of cleaning.