National Clothesline

Perc usage has been dropping in California and is likely to continue to drop, according to the results released last month of a statewide survey conducted by the California Air Resources Board.

The decline in perc usage — both in terms of quantity consumed and the number of cleaners using it — was measured between 1991, the last time a survey was taken and 2003, the year the new survey was conducted. Perc consumption declined from 1.1 million gallons in 1991 to 378,000 in 2003. Over that period of time, the number of perc machines in service fell from 5,310 to 4,670.

During that same time, the total poundage of drycleaning in the state remained about the same. Perc’s share of the cleaning fell from 96 percent to 84 percent in the 12 years. Those percentages roughly reflect the breakdown of perc drycleaners and non-perc drycleaners in the CARB surveys, both in 1991 and in 2003.

Taking up most of the slack from perc was DF2000, CARB said. DF2000, which wasn’t even around when the 1991 survey was taken, is now used in eight percent of the California drycleaning facilities surveyed. GreenEarth accounted for another two percent. Three percent were listed as “professional wetcleaning” facilities. A variety of other alternatives made up one percent of the total. CARB classified four percent of the facilities as “mixed,” meaning they use a combination of perc and one of the other cleaning alternatives.

The survey was part of an overall assessment of current drycleaning technologies undertaken by CARB in its technical evaluation of the state Airborne Toxic Control Measure (ATCM) for emissions of perc from drycleaning operations. CARB is assessing whether the ATCM adopted in 1993 is adequate for protecting public health or if it needs to be revised. A CARB proposal for amending the ATCM could come as early as next month, but the assessment did not indicate what those changes might be.

CARB sent survey forms in 2003 to 5,800 facilities; about one-third of those returned the survey and of those 265 proved to be drop-off stores with no drycleaning machines. From that, CARB inferred that there are just over 5,000 drycleaning plants in the state and around 800 drop-off shops.

CARB staff also followed up with site visits to some drycleaning plants to compare data it had received in the surveys, concluding that what was found in those site visits was “reasonably similar to the survey results.”

What CARB found were many very small, independently-owned businesses. More than half of the cleaning plants had two or fewer full-time equivalent employees and 40 percent grossed less than $100,000 annually. Further, a third of the owners had been in the business less than five years.

At the other end of the spectrum, only five percent claimed annual receipts of more than $500,000; 16 percent had more than five full-time equivalent employees.

The average size of the plants in the survey was 1,900 square feet. Because more than half of them are within 20 feet of the nearest business, CARB concluded that most are likely located in strip malls. About two percent were co-located, meaning there are people living above or next to the plant.

In keeping with the small-operation picture, fewer than one in 10 of the drycleaning plants had more than one machine. The statewide average, CARB said, was 1.09 machines per plant — making a total of 5,500 drycleaning machines operating in California. Of those, 4,670 are perc machines.

The average age of all cleaning machines — both perc and non-perc — was eight years. As would be expected, the third generation perc machines tended to be older, with an average age of 10 years. These constituted about three in five of the machines in the survey.

Fourth-generation perc machines averaged about four years old and made up 28 percent of the total. Alternative solvent machines were newer still; DF2000 machines averaged two years old in the 2003 survey, for example.

When asked about buying a new machine, many plant operators told CARB, first of all, that they do not intend to replace their machine in the near future. But if all drycleaning machines in California were suddenly replaced with new machines in accordance with answers given on the survey, the numbers of plants using perc would be cut in half.

While perc would still be the overwhelming favorite, only 44 percent said they would replace their current machines with a perc machine. One in four said they would choose a machine using DF2000 and 15 percent said they would go with GreenEarth.

The big gainer in this scenario would be liquid carbon dioxide. Fully 10 percent of the cleaners in the survey said they would buy a CO2 machine. CARB said it had difficulty locating CO2 operators for the survey, although there are several in California today.

Among the other choices, wetcleaning ranked highest for the hypothetical new buyers, catching the favor of 13 percent. “Other” came next at eight percent, followed by Rynex, Stoddard, Ecosolv and PureDry.