Both water and energy are limited resources that must be protected not only for our children but for us too! The time has come that we can no longer take these deceivingly ubiquitous assets for granted. We must address waste and misuse at every opportunity and begin to change some of our long-held beliefs on how to do all the things we have to do, like cleaning textiles.
What is ‘Green Laundry’?
Green laundry is an idea whose time has come and an idea that demands great attention. The term Green Laundry is applied to a philosophy of textile care that focuses on reducing the total environmental impact of traditional laundry operations.
Why is Green Laundry Important?
It is not commonly known, but textile care operations around the World consume an enormous amount of water and energy every day. The textile care industry is one of the largest, perpetual consumers of fresh, drinking water and energy on the Planet. Textile care facilities also produce an enormous volume of wastewater every day. Wastewater from a typical laundry is loaded with Chlorine, alkali, acid, surfactant, soil, high BOD and COD and low to no DO. All of this means that typical laundry wastewater is harmful to the environment and to our limited fresh water supplies. A laundry built on green principles will not use the harsh mix of chemicals that produce all of these wastewater problems. A truly green laundry using a Water Energy Ozone Laundry System will actually produce wastewater with almost no chemical residues, low to no BOD and COD and a raised DO (Dissolved Oxygen) level. In addition, textile care facilities produce a large volume of VOC’s, suspended particles and other undesirable airborne contaminants. Chemical residues in fabrics being processed in the dryers are liberated in the heat and discharged into the parking lot through the dryer vents. Many of these chemicals we know are toxic and some we don’t even know what they can do to us. Chlorine in tap water and bleach used in traditional methods mixes with organic matter (body oils and fluids, food, etc) in the dirty linens to produce trihalomethanes. A more common name for this class of contaminant is VOC’s or Volatile Organic Compounds. These unhealthy compounds are released from all the washers and propelled from the dryers into the environment around most typical laundry facilities. Manufacturers of many familiar products have had to alter their production methods to limit the amount of VOC’s their products release into the environment. Paint, glue, siding, plywood and other well known products have all been modified to limit human exposure to these undesirable pollutants. A Water Energy Green Laundry System will replace the chemicals responsible for this environmental scourge with environmentally friendly ozone, eliminating the VOC problem altogether. Ozone’s less-damaging effects on the linens will also reduce the amount of lint produced in the dryers.
Why Have a Green Laundry?
The primary reasons you should convert to a Green Laundry System are to save money and to help save the Earth. Laundry Consulting and Design has developed the Water Energy Green Laundry System to address a growing crisis in the textile care industry, a crisis of epic proportions. Historically, laundries have been huge consumers of limited resources. Today’s market price of those resources reflects their scarcity and demand. Traditional laundering methods require an enormous amount of water and energy to clean the mountains of linen used around the World every day. Most people aren’t even aware of the magnitude of the problem. A typical laundry uses a tremendous amount of energy and an average of 3 gallons of water for every single pound of linens processed. This resource-intensive process has pretty much escaped the ire of environmentally-conscious groups because it’s just a ‘dirty little secret’ you can’t do anything about. Well, that’s not exactly true any more.