So I am venturing into the blogosphere after a lot of procrastination and so here is a great topic to educate the consumer on. I see signs on store fronts of dry cleaners claiming that they are “ORGANIC“. I even have customers that come in and say I went down the street to the “Organic’ “eco-friendly” dry cleaner and the sequins on this dress lost all the color. The average consumer not only equates the word “Organic” with being safe for the environment but also that is safe for the clothes. If they would only stop and think or check the USDA for the term Organic they would know that that term only applies to safe food. Unfortunately the word “organic” is used unscrupulously by many a dry cleaner referring rather to the source of the solvent ie: that it is petroleum based with some carbon molecular structure and henceforth “Organic”. By that same reasoning the spill in the Gulf of Mexico would just be an organic spill!

At Oakwood we use GreenEarth which is Silicone D5 that when spilled safely breaks down into its three natural elements – sand (SiO2) and trace amounts of water and carbon dioxide. Harmless ingredients and so also extremely gentle on the clothes. Ask any one of my customers that has used us to clean their $2500.00 Zegna suit what it feels like when they put it on as opposed to the time it was cleaned at my competitors. This is what allows us to clean some of the most delicate, fancy trimmed wedding gowns and costumes that belong to some Nashville’s legendary performers. It is not regulated by the EPA and is not a volatile organic compound (VOC). Matter of fact, Oakwood Cleaners is the only dry cleaner allowed to operate with an air pollution permit by Nashville’s Health department.

Then you have the dry cleaners that use hydrocarbon/petroleum that use the term “Organic”most often in this area. They are classified VOC’s and recognized as a contributor to smog and listed by the EPA as a neurotoxin and requires a cleanup if spilled.

The latest greenwasher in our industry is a process called “Solvair” which uses a glycol-ether solvent. This process uses CO2 to rinse and dry the garments and so the dry cleaner claims to use CO2 to clean your clothes. According to this article in Real Green the Carbon Dioxide Dry Cleaners Alliance will not allow Solvair users to join their group because of the known toxicities in their process. I also wonder why there is so little technical information on the Solvair website about the chemical make up of their solvent. Umm….

At Oakwood we also do a lot of wet cleaning. It doesn’t get any greener than that! Very similar to washing at home except we have washers that use enzymes as detergents and can agitate at less than 5 RPM (revolutions per minute) to keep mechanical action to the minimum and we can even control temperature to the degree. Here is our latest investment that was well over $20,000.00 to use water as the cleaning solution. We also have some of Europe’s finest finishing equipment that will stretch something that is shrunk to the precise measurement. The finest machines and a well trained staff is what makes us Nashville’s finest.