Cleaner uses new method without harsh chemicals
[attach]1129[/attach]How would you feel if your little black dress turned green?
Ashbury Cleaners thinks you’d be pleasantly surprised.
Ashbury, located at 418 Summerhill Avenue, is the city’s latest dry cleaner to adopt an environmentally friendly approach to the cleaning process and they think they’ve made a good decision.
“I love it,” says Mike Sanghera, who owns the store with his wife, Rose.
“I’ve been in the dry cleaning business for over 25 years. The chemicals we used to use were harmful to us and to the environment, but this new method is amazing.”
The method Sanghera is referring to is GreenEarth Cleaning, a system that eliminates the harsh chemical Perchloroethylene, or Perc for short, from the dry cleaning process. Using a liquid silicone solvent, GreenEarth offers a gentler, more effective process that has been thoroughly tested and even awarded by governments around the world for its environmentally friendly composition.
“Clothes actually look better with this system,” Sanghera says. “Whites stay white and darks clothes keep their colour longer.”
And at no extra cost to the customer, the system seems to be an all-around winner.
“Our customers really like it,” says Sanghera, who attended seminars on the product before adopting the GreenEarth method. “We have even more customers coming to us because they know we use this system.”
Sanghera says the old Perc method made his health deteriorate. Dry, cracked hands was one side effect that has disappeared since abandoning the chemical, he says.
“Using GreenEarth does more than help businesses stand out from the crowd,” says GreenEarth Cleaning Canada President Robert Kuenzlen. “It improves people’s health and the environment, too. One of the dry cleaners using our system used to have such bad asthma that he needed a puffer on a daily basis. Now that he’s not using Perc, he doesn’t have to use his puffer anymore.”
The solvent responsible for these health improvements is liquid silicone – a non-toxic substance found in many household items such as shampoo and body lotion. Once the solvent has been used to safely clean clothes, it breaks down and turns back into its three natural components: sand, water and carbon dioxide. With this method, clothes are cleaned safely with no damage to the environment, dry cleaner or the person wearing the garment.
With no detectable odour, the need to air out your clothes after a visit to the dry cleaner’s is gone.
“Now our garments smell so much better,” Sanghera says. “It’s great for ourselves and our customers.”
