Dry Cleaners Going Green

From Philadelphia Inquirer 10/1/03

Working to remove a troubling solvent
By Tom Avril
Inquirer Staff Writer

The splitting headaches are a thing of the past for Philip Browne.

Peggy Myers' wool skirts don't have that funny smell anymore.

And a woman who has a skin condition will get her insurance company to pick
up her dry-cleaning bill.

The reason? Dry cleaners are going "green."

With the industry increasingly under fire for polluting the air and water, a
small but growing number of stores are abandoning the old chemicals in favor
of more earth-friendly alternatives.

Regulators say the chief villain is perchloroethylene, the solvent that
gives clothes that whiff of synthetic sweetness.

A suspected carcinogen at high doses, "perc" contributes to smog, a category
in which Philadelphia is a national leader. It also can contaminate
groundwater, a fact that has prompted state officials to provide bottled
water to Chester County residents in two recent cases.

Industry representatives defend perc as perfectly safe if used properly in
modern cleaning machines. And some say nothing works like perc to freshen up
that silk blouse.

Yet green cleaners are clearly gaining a foothold, with at least six
locations opening in the Delaware Valley during the last year. Supporters
say the alternative methods work just as well, citing a recent Consumer
Reports study.

Monarch Natural Cleaners, which has stores in Medford, Cherry Hill, Devon
and Ardmore (the last operating under the name A. Talone), cleans clothes
with food-grade carbon dioxide, the same stuff used to make soda bubbly.

Green Clean Dry Cleaners, with stores in Willow Grove and Horsham, uses a
silicone-based solvent.

Customers and employees at both chains say they notice a difference -
primarily in lack of odor.

"I used to get headaches a lot, just about every day," winced Browne, a West
Philadelphia resident whose former employer (also a dry cleaner) used perc.
"Between the eyes."

Now that he works at Monarch's airy, high-ceilinged plant in Camden, which
cleans clothes for all four of the chain's stores, Browne called the change
"refreshing."

The plant's two $125,000 machines are imposing, with 4-inch-thick circular
steel doors that look like something on a space-station escape hatch.

Carbon dioxide, normally a gas at room temperature, is converted to a liquid
at high pressure. It acts as a carrier for biodegradable soaps, much as
water carries the soap in a regular washing machine.

When the cycle stops, the pressure is relieved and the liquid turns back
into a gas, most of which is later reused. The clothes dry instantly and
emerge from the machine cool to the touch.

"It's like a magic trick," said Mark J. Ullmann, Monarch's chief operating
officer.

Industry associations say they do not have figures on the number of green
cleaners. But a study by the Textile Care Allied Trades Association found
that nationwide demand for perc dropped 82 percent from 1985 to 2002, from
260 million pounds to 47 million pounds.

Jay Calleja, spokesman for the International Fabricare Institute, said green
cleaners played a role in the drop but also cited two other factors:
"closed-loop" perc machines that are better sealed to prevent volatile
emissions, and a decline in the number of dry-clean-only clothes (witness
the "business-casual" trend).

In Southern California, perc has been banned altogether; the final phase-out
is to come in 2020.

The shift away from the chemical is a welcome trend for Bruce Goodman, the
landlord for the Green Clean store in Willow Grove.

Before lining up tenants for his new strip mall on Moreland Road, Goodman
had told townhouse residents behind the site that he wouldn't lease space to
certain tenants, including dry cleaners. Sensitive to liability issues, he
wasn't keen on cleaners himself. Perhaps rightly so. In 2001, for example,
the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection provided bottled
water to 11 Phoenixville homes whose wells had been tainted by perc, and it
later ran a water line to solve the problem permanently.

But when Goodman later went back to tell residents about Green Clean, he
received little objection, recalled Peggy Myers, former president of the
Twin Brooks residents' board.

"I'm one of their first customers," said Myers, now an Abington Township
commissioner. Her wools and rayons, she said, now have "a much fresher
smell."

Prices are comparable to or slightly higher than those at traditional dry
cleaners. Cleaning a silk blouse at Green Clean costs $4.25; Monarch charges
$4.95 - not high for its Main Line location.

Some customers say they go to the stores because of performance or location.
Three of Monarch's four stores were bought from different owners and
inherited lots of customers - including A. Talone, a Main Line institution
of sorts.

Yet once they notice the green thing, it is a big hook, said Glenn Smith,
who owns Green Clean with his wife.

Then there are those who seek out the store for eco-reasons. Smith said an
insurance company representative called recently to ask about prices, saying
the insurer was going to pay the cleaning bill for a woman who lives in the
Willingboro area, half an hour away.

Smith, a former stock trader, and his brother-in-law, store manager John
Converse, come across as regular guys.

Then there's Ullmann, who freely acknowledges that his in-laws, with whom he
runs the Monarch business, think he's an "environmental nut."

He wears organic cotton clothes and insists on recyclable plastic hangers.
Ullmann also requires that the plant's janitorial service use citrus-based
cleaners that contain no chlorine or ammonia.

Alas, dry-cleaning being what it is, there was an unforeseen conflict: fur
coats.

"As an environmentalist, I don't like that," Ullmann said of killing animals
for their fur. "But I figure if I keep [the coats] looking nice, they won't
buy a new one."