The Greener Dry Cleaner
Wondering about all those organic dry cleaning signs around New York? Us too. So, we took a tour of the area's only environmentally friendly CO2 dry cleaning facility to find out why CO2 is the solution, and organic isn't as clean as you thought.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


By Norman Clausen

October 23, 2007

Sure the tag says “Dry Clean Only,” but what could it hurt to throw it in with the rest of the wash? If you’re looking to have that question answered the hard way, go ahead and test the tag, but don’t be surprised when you open the washing machine and pull out a lump of ruined silk that used to be a tie. It’s not a pretty sight— threads all pulled, color faded, the intricately woven little horseback polo man looking more like a giant squid spitting ink. Poor little guy never stood a chance.

Even taking ruined garments into consideration, I’ve never been too thrilled with the alternative—dry cleaning. For one thing, it’s a total misnomer. Dry cleaning is dry only in the sense that there is no water involved, but your clothes are still dripping wet with the chemical perchloroethylene. And considering “perc” has been the cancer-causing, ground-and-air-polluting star of the dry cleaning show for about 70 years, I would hardly call it clean for my body or for the environment. But what choice does the conscious consumer have?

Enter Green Apple Cleaners—the New York area’s only carbon dioxide (CO2) cleaner, and one of only 32 in the country. Carbon dioxide is naturally occurring in our own body and the environment, making the cleaning process a non-toxic and environmentally friendly alternative that is much overdue.

So, how does CO2 clean your clothing? Actually, quite well, according to Consumer Reports. Their 2003 study compared several cleaning methods, including CO2, silicone-based cleaners, wet-cleaning, and perc. Their conclusion—CO2 was the best overall method, with no pilling, shrinkage, fading, or odor. The method actually fared better than the dry cleaning standard, perc, which interestingly enough finished near the bottom on almost all criteria.

How It Works

When you think about it, the method is nothing new. Consider some popular home remedies for stain removal. Does club soda come to mind? It’s basically just water with dissolved CO2, yet it works wonders that plain water couldn’t. However, many fabrics don’t fare well in water. So, if we take the water out of club soda, we’re left with compressed CO2. Now, compress that CO2 to 800 psi in a vacuum-sealed washer filled with your most delicate garments and voilà! You’ve got clean clothes.

Of course, that’s a simplified version of the story. For more details, I stopped by the main offices of Green Apple Cleaners in Lodi, New Jersey to speak with co-founders David Kistner and Stavros Michailidis. “The whole process is based on pressure change,” says Kistner. “When you open it up, it’s cold from the CO2’s change of state. So rather than your clothes coming out hot and leaching gas, the garments come out with literally no odor in the fabric at all. Literally nothing can survive in 800-psi liquid CO2. It’s completely stripped out of any odor-causing mildew, bacteria, or fungus—it kills everything.”

A pure, beverage-grade CO2 can be used in the process alone or in combination with a non-toxic detergent that binds specifically to dirt and CO2, but not the garment itself. When the CO2 is flushed at the end of the cycle, all of the detergent and dirt go with it, without leaving residue on your clothing. The detergent is totally safe, and has won a number of green chemistry awards and accolades.

“They say you could drink it,” Kistner says. “I haven’t tried yet, but they say you can.”

By the fall, Green Apple will be operating one of the first machines in the world that will use a corn oil derivative that gently lubricates the soiled garment before flushing it four times with liquid CO2. It’s just as effective in cleaning, just as non-toxic, and at the end of the process, the used corn oil can be recycled in industry to be used as biodiesel.

Green Apple Cleaners is also operating the only CO2 machine in the country that has a second still, allowing them to constantly clean the CO2 during each cycle.

“Redeposition is an issue in all types of cleaning,” Stavros says. “Once you remove the dirt from the garment, you still have to filter it. When people don’t take care of their machines properly, the dirt gets put right back on the clothing. So you’re getting my dirt, I’m getting your dirt.”

No offense to anyone, but at least I know where my dirt’s been. But Green Apple doesn’t share this common cleaning problem, as the custom-designed two-still construction of their machine allows it to be self-cleaning. It also allows them to recycle 98% of their CO2, which makes the whole process incredibly efficient and better for the environment.

Clean Clothes, Cleaner Planet

Over the past few years, we’ve heard so much about the link between carbon dioxide and global warming. So, one of the coolest things about CO2 cleaning is that it’s actually taking carbon dioxide out of the environment by using recycled CO2 from industry. For instance, the alcohol fermentation process gives off a lot of CO2 that used to be vented straight into the atmosphere. Today, much of this carbon dioxide is captured and cleaned for various uses, such as dry cleaning or refilling the CO2 tank on your buddy’s kegerator— both noble causes.

“If you were to clean your clothes here at Green Apple Cleaners for a year, you’d use less CO2 than if you were to get in your car and drive for 15 minutes,” Kistner says. “And our CO2 is recycled, so it’s already better than the new CO2 from your car.” Kistner’s own car—a hybrid Toyota Prius— sits in the Green Apple parking lot right next to their delivery truck—the highest efficiency diesel truck on the market. So, it’s clear that they’re serious about stamping out greenhouse gases in both their business and personal lives. But it was another moment in his personal life that originally piqued Kistner’s interest in the industry—when he first learned that his wife was pregnant with twin boys.

“As first time parents, you read everything you can—especially with twins,” Kistner says. “One of the fathering books I read said that you should not let your wife wear dry cleaned clothes. So, I did a little research and found that a number of the potentially harmful chemicals used in the dry cleaning industry remain on the garments and off-gas.”

Perc, as well as the new alternatives on the market—hydrocarbons—are VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds). In layman’s terms, that means they give off fumes at room temperature. Just for comparison’s sake, a few of the more common VOCs are gasoline and paint thinner—in which perc is a major ingredient. And since it’s well known that your clothes retain a residue of these chemicals after they’ve been dry cleaned, you can expect to be inhaling the trace vapors for some time.

“It’s something that I didn’t want for my children, and I’m sure something that most people don’t want for theirs,” Kistner adds.

Though, studies suggest that the concentration of fumes given off by the garments is not likely high enough to cause serious health concerns, it can be a much more serious problem for people who work in the industry, or who live near dry cleaning facilities. Considering that New York has hundreds of dry cleaners—almost all on the ground floor of residential buildings— and the New York area has thousands of cleaners, this is a fairly major concern. The long-term effects of inhalation and ground water contamination are believed to include liver and kidney damage, birth defects, childhood cancers like lymphoma, as well as a higher incidence of a number of rare cancers in adults.

“The new perc regulations are a lot better than they were 10 or 20 years ago, but now, it’s the same story with hydrocarbon,” Stavros says. “Everyone has the mindset of ‘Oh, hydrocarbon—you don’t have to worry about that—just pour it down the drain.’ That’s what they were saying about perc 20 years ago.”

And in fact, several perc-producing companies including Dow Chemical recently lost a long-running lawsuit with the California city of Modesto to the tune of $175 million for telling local dry cleaners to do just that—pour it down the drain. A jury found the companies liable for damages after concluding that they had continued to mislead the industry and the public about the safety of the chemical for 30 years after they knew about potential hazards. The jury award was readjusted on appeal to just over $13 million, despite much of Modesto being considered a top-level ecological disaster zone by the federal government. It is estimated that 10% of all wells in California are contaminated by unsafe levels of the solvent.

In response, California has finally dished out some heavy-handed legislation. By July 2010, all older generation perc machines must be removed from the state, and cleaners operating in mixed-use residential and office buildings must remove even the newer generation perc machines. By 2023, no more perc-based dry cleaning machines will be permitted anywhere in the state.

Buyer Beware

The ban of perc has been long in discussion, so naturally the dry cleaning industry has already found new techniques to avoid impending legislation. One new method on the market replaces perc with a hydrocarbon called DF-2000. The move is not so much surprising, but disturbing, as many dry cleaners are labeling hydrocarbon cleaning as “Organic.”

“The rampant use of the word organic in dry cleaning is a dangerous one, because of the misconceptions in the marketplace,” Kistner says. “They’re labeling it this way because people believe, ‘Oh, if it’s organic like my food, it must be good.’”

However, the word organic can mean two very different things. In the terms of food, it means that no artificial pesticides and chemicals were used to treat the crops. This is a term specific to the food and cosmetics industries—the only two industries to regulate the usage of the word and the standards that go into it.

In the more general biochemistry definition of the word, an organic molecule is any molecule that contains carbon. This includes the hydrocarbons, which are Volatile Organic Compounds, but are still technically organic. Some of the most common hydrocarbons include methane, propane, butane, and petroleum—you just stop me when one of those sounds clean enough to eat. So, while hydrocarbons and perc are technically organic, they are about as far as you can get from the perception of organic that you typically associate with health food. Unfortunately, this crafty little piece of marketing is aimed at tricking people into thinking they’re actually doing something better for themselves and the environment, when that’s not the case.

“It would be the same thing if you went down to your local Exxon station and they hung an ‘Organic Gas’ sign out front,” Kistner says.

And wouldn’t you guess it—DF-2000 is actually manufactured by ExxonMobile. Doesn’t the name just scream organic? The chemical is derived from crude oil, and is a known ozone pollutant, mixing in the environment with other emissions to help produce smog. The EPA has listed it as a neurotoxin.

“CO2 is natural to you and to the environment,” Kistner says. “You can open up the door of the machine and put your head right in there, whereas if you put your head in a hydrocarbon machine, you’ll pass out.”

It’s also better for the clothes. Depending on the type of fabric, it’s estimated that CO2 cleaning extends the life of clothing by anywhere from 20-40% over traditional dry cleaning methods, which require a great amount of heat to vent the toxic fumes. Of course, the heating process takes a toll on the environment and your clothing.

“You don’t see any pilling or fading,” says Kistner, holding up a delicate cashmere sweater. “CO2 is a small molecule, so it doesn’t destroy any of the fabric. Typically when you take a big molecule and you bash it into the fiber, it breaks and goes back to its natural curly shape. That’s how you get pilling. You don’t have that with CO2.”

Throughout the whole process Green Apple Cleaners keeps the quality of your cleaning, the quality of your health, and the health of the planet in mind. The whole process is non-toxic and non-polluting. Clothing is delivered in reusable garment bags, so you don’t have ten giant plastic bags to throw away each time you clean your clothes. They use fuel-efficient vehicles for pick-up and delivery. Even their hanger tops and business cards are printed on 100% recycled paper.

“From the packaging, to the finishing, to delivery, to maintenance in the building, we try to keep the environment in mind,” says Kistner. “All the while, doing it at an affordable price.”