Guide to

Dry Cleaners

Big Picture

Looking suave isn’t easy, especially if you are a mere mortal who doesn’t have a stylist, hair dresser, and makeup artist on call at all times to make sure you put your best foot, nose, face, and shoulder forward. Chances are you’ll need something washed at the dry cleaner just in time for that fancy gala, important interview, graduation dinner, or summer wedding. While you are pulling the plastic off your next-day-service freshly pressed suit, gown, or leather jacket, did you ever take a few minutes to wonder what’s behind the wire hangers, paper tags, and sickly sweet smell of cleaning chemicals?

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Factoids n' Stuff

Dry cleaning was “invented” by John Baptiste Jolly in 1855. After his maid knocked over a kerosene lamp onto the table, he noticed that the table cloth got cleaner. (How Stuff Works, How Dry Cleaning Works)
“Cooked muck” and “sludge” are some of the delicious sounding wastes produced by dry cleaning. (Wikipedia, Dry Cleaning)
In January, 2007, California became the first state to ban perc, the most common dry cleaning chemical, and will be perc-free by 2023. (MSNBC, “Calif. air regulators ban dry-cleaning chemical”)
Robert Pearson filed a $67 million lawsuit against his dry cleaner over a lost pair of pants. (Wall Street Journal, “The Great American Pants Suit”)
He lost. (BBC News, “US man loses $54m trousers claim”)
There are about 36,000 dry cleaning shops in the US. Most have fewer than 10 employees. (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Dry Cleaning)
The film “A Civil Action” starring John Travolta and Robert Duvall was based on the real-life court case involving the contamination of the water supply in Woburn, MA by chemicals used in dry cleaning.
In 2004, 263,769 lbs of the hazardous chemical perc was used in Massachusetts. This is down from the 1,908,018 lbs used in 1991. (Toxics Use Reduction Institute, Massachusetts Toxic Use Reduction Act Data)
3.5 billion wire hangers go to US landfills every year. ("The Green Umbrella: Green Business Opportunities", Small Business Trends)

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What Goes In?

For every load of clothes you bring in, your dry cleaner brings in a load of cleaning chemicals. The traditional dry cleaning process is “dry” because it doesn’t use water. It does, however, use a liquid—usually a solvent called tetrachloroethene, also known as perchloroethylene, PCE, and more commonly perc—to remove stains and wash clothes. Perc is a designated hazardous waste, a recognized carcinogen and a suspected developmental, reproductive, kidney, liver, respiratory, neuro, and gastrointestinal toxicant. (Scorecard, Chemical Profile for Tetrachloroethylene)
It’s likely your dry cleaner uses perc—nearly 85% do—but safer cleaning options are available if you look in the right places:

Wet Cleaning – What’s “wet” about it? Water and conventional soap, instead of perc, is used to clean your clothes. It’s time intensive perc because each garment has to be treated differently (you can’t just toss everything in the perc machine), but uses fewer toxins and gets clothes just as clean. The EPA publishes a list of cleaners who use the wet cleaning process.
Liquid Carbon Dioxide – CO2 is usually a gas at room temperature, but when pressurized, it can be kept as a liquid and used in special machines to clean your clothes. The positives of liquid CO2 are that it can clean without heat, can be reused over and over, and it doesn’t leave dangerous residues on your clothes. The negatives are that the special machines needed to wash with liquid CO2 are expensive, and only a handful of dry cleaners around the country have them.
Liquid Silicone – The folks at GreenEarth Cleaning have developed a carbon-free cleaning process using liquid silicone. Find out more about the liquid silicone process and locate cleaners who use it on the GreenEarth website.

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What Comes Out?

When you leave the dry cleaner with spotless shirts and immaculate linens, chances are good that you are also schlepping a small army of hangers and plastic bags. Does the dry cleaner take back the hangers and plastic bags for recycling? Better yet, do they offer alternatives such as cardboard hangers made from recycled paper and reusable garment bags?
Some chemicals come home on your clothes (it’s unavoidable), but what happens to the ones that are left at the cleaner? Perc gets filtered and reused, but eventually it becomes unusable. As a hazardous waste, it has to be documented and disposed of properly according to the regulations laid out by the state government (in Massachusetts the DEP).

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How's it Run?

In addition to cleaning, dry cleaners also dry, press, and spot treat your clothes. Are they using energy efficient, toxin-free processes to do this? Many cleaners also have coin operated washers and dryers. Are the machines older than your grandparents? If so, they probably aren’t the most energy efficient models available. Does the dry cleaner buy supplies in large sizes to avoid extra packaging, or do they sell single-serving packets of detergent? Do they reuse items, like repurposing old plastic garment bags into trash can liners? What about all those paper dry cleaning slips, do they go into the trash or do they get recycled?

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What They Care About

Are the people in charge aware of the health risks of working with chemicals like perc? Do they make that information available to their employees and customers who are exposed to toxins? If they can’t afford to switch to a safer cleaning process, are they doing their best to minimize the health risks, like disposing of the chemicals safely and making sure the building has proper ventilation?

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What to Ask

What kind of cleaning process do you use? Do you use an alternative to perc, like wet cleaning, liquid carbon dioxide, or liquid silicone?
What kinds of machines do you use? How much energy do they consume?
Do you turn off your machines when they aren’t in use?
Do you take back hangers and plastic garment bags for recycling?
Do you buy your supplies and chemicals in bulk to avoid extra packaging?
How do you dispose of your cleaning chemicals?

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What to Do

Return your wire hangers to the dry cleaner.
If your dry cleaner recycles plastic garment bags, bring them back. If they don’t, you can return them at any grocery store that takes back plastic shopping bags.
Bring a reusable garment bag and ask your dry cleaner to put your clothes in it instead of in plastic bags. Too posh for a reusable bag? Even Sex and the City has jumped on this garment-wagon.
Some "dry clean only" items can actually be washed at home, so roll up your sleeves and try some hand washing.
For those difficult-to-iron items, wash them at home and just take them to the dry cleaner for pressing. That way you'll get crisp clothes without the nasty chemicals.
When doing laundry at home, you can save energy by waiting until you have a full load, using cold water, and line drying.

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