Posted By: emmaspirit on
I gladly switched to better tasting organic produce and jumped at the chance to experiment with natural beauty products but using an organic dry cleaner seemed like such a risk. Since I moved to NYC in 1988, I have made a weekly trip to my friendly neighborhood, Korean dry cleaner. Until recently, in NYC the organic dry cleaner options were primarily outer borough businesses that would send a messenger to come pick up your dry cleaning at your building. Could I trust our expensive suits, my husband’s custom shirts and my white silk blouses to a dry cleaner I couldn’t actually look in the eye? Was it possible that my “dry clean only” clothes could get clean without those noxious dry cleaning chemicals I had grown up with?
You bet. This Earth Day my husband and I took the plunge and switched to Green Apple Cleaners – a new friendly neighborhood C02 green dry cleaner. This natural carbon dioxide technology is like washing your clothes in fizzy water…like club soda…and it is safe for our clothes as well as the environment. In fact, CO2 will actually remove the residual harmful chemicals hiding in your clothes from traditional dry cleaners who use harsh chemicals (perchloroethylene, hydrocarbons and silicone) that are hazardous wastes and ground water contaminants. These chemicals have been linked to the high incidents of leukemia among dry cleaner employees.
Plus the CO2 process actually helps the environment as their website explains:
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is naturally abundant in our environment, and it can be collected as a by-product of many industrial processes—as a result, our cleaning method doesn't add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. In fact, we use CO2 that would have been released into the environment, thereby reducing overall global emissionsof the gas.
I’ll admit that my expectations were low. I thought that maybe the clothes would come back looking like they had barely been touched. I knew that they wouldn’t smell like chemicals, and I figured that would be good enough. I didn’t expect that the clothing would be delivered in reusable garment bags, so I wouldn’t have all those plastic bags to throw away, and they drive around town in fuel-efficient vehicles for pick-ups and deliveries. While I haven’t yet noticed any significant difference in the quality of the dry cleaning, I know that by going chemical-free I’m doing something good for me and for my planet.
Check out their website to learn more and search the internet for local CO2 green dry cleaning options near you. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised how clean green can be.
Mary Beth Gonzalez
Tags:
dry cleaner, co2, ecofriendly, leukemia, green
