Diamond Dry Cleaners and the environment
How safe is drycleaning for the environment?
In most countries including New Zealand, most drycleaners use a solvent called perchloroethylene, or "perc". It looks just like water, but is nearly twice as heavy. Interestingly, it's made from coke, although exactly how my book doesn't say. This means that it's a mineral based product somehow derived originally from coal. It is a very effective cleaner.
We are occasionally asked about how much solvent we use, and what happens to all the used solvent? After all, it's OK for dirty water to go down the drain but solvent is another matter. Strangely, the basic answer is that although dry-cleaning is done with solvent, a modern machine uses up almost none. This is because after each load the used solvent returns to a distilling tank where it is turned into clean solvent for re-use. We have estimated we re-use the same solvent 1700-1800 times. Imagine how long your water would last if your washing machine did that! Usually once a week our Drycleaning team scrapes the accumulated soil out of the bottom of the distilling tank for disposal.
Modern machines are so effective in recovering the solvent, that at Diamond Dry Cleaners Apparelmaster we calculate that we use about 2ml of solvent per kilogram of clothes cleaned. That's not much, and is less than one ml for a pair of trousers. So interestingly, although the solvent costs around $700 per drum, we spend little more on solvent than we do on staff morning tea supplies.
We are very aware of environmental issues involved with dry cleaning we strive to be "green" as currently possible! Our dry-cleaning solvent (perc) is recycled and reused, filtered and distilled to remove all impurities. Any waste is sent to a licensed waste disposal company.
We encourage our customers to recycle their wire and plastic hangers at our store. The wrap we use to cover your garments is cut on a machine to fit the size of the garments rather than a standard size to save plastic waste. Our machinery is generally purchased from Europe where the water and environmental regulations are stricter.
We practice the Three R's: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
We are actively looking at ways to improve our environmental Carbon Footprint and currently we are doing the following
Water recycling- Paper/cardboard & plastic container Recycling
- Water Heat Exchanger
- Dryer Heat Exchange-Heat produced is recycled and reused
- Boiler Heat Exchange-Heat is extracted from boiler flue before discharge
- Modern Vehicle Fleet
- Solvent Waste recycling
- Insulation of Steam/Hot water pipes
- Lighting-Timers on low use areas
- Energy Saving light bulbs