Who is in control of your future?
This month's front page offers a stark view of the future of the drycleaning
industry. The picture of little Angelique Louie sorting clothes is irresistibly
cute, but the other headlines on the page offer a sobering contrast. Once
again, perc is under attack and a major drycleaning chain files for bankruptcy.
Some day Angelique may want to be the third-generation owner of her family’s business, but the industry she stands to be a part of will be a lot different
than the one of yesterday and today.
For one thing, the banning of perc is becoming more of a forgone conclusion than
a controversial issue. The federal clean-air rules seek to make the deadline in
the year 2020 for co-residential cleaning locations, but that guideline has
already been blatantly ignored by the Air Quality Board of the Philadelphia
Department of Health. The agency has proposed its own set of rules that will
effectively wipe out perc from all co-residential and co-located plants in the
city within two years.
As they are written now, the proposed rules in Philadelphia will put most of the
city’s cleaning businesses out of business by that time frame. A vast majority of the
city's cleaners consist of small mom-and-pop operations that reside in
co-residential or co-located areas, and there are no freestanding locations to
be found. So, in order for a cleaner to keep operating past the deadline of the
proposed rules, they would have to invest in another cleaning technology within
24 months. Such small cleaners cannot afford alternatives like GreenEarth and
carbon dioxide, and those who want to switch to hydrocarbons will also have to
install an expensive sprinkler system. The financial obstacle is staggering, to
say the least.
Complying to more onerous rules is one thing, but making it happen virtually
overnight is another. Philadelphia cleaners no longer have the luxury of biding
time and feeling apathy. The Pennsylvania and Delaware Cleaners Association is
fighting to make changes to the legislation, but it cannot do so alone. Dale
Kaplan, the group’s vice president of government relations, is making a call out to regional
cleaners to converge for a grassroots movement to provide a louder voice for
the regulators to hear. Why isn’t anybody answering? The industry’s future is at stake, and not just for the City of Brotherly Love. This issue
should matter to every cleaner in the country, especially those who have an
Angelique of their own who may one day continue the family legacy — provided there is still a legacy left.
Year-old advice is as good as ever
It has been one year since the Drycleaning and Laundry Institute released its
White Paper which summarized the status of all of the drycleaning solvents
currently in use in the industry. In that year, there have been notable
developments on the cleaning solvent front. In particular, we have seen the
first handful of installations of Solvair cleaning systems; further evaluations
by government regulators of GreenEarth solvent, one in California that appears
positive, another from Canada that could be negative; continued growth of
hydrocarbon cleaning systems, especially among cleaners who are opting out of
perc; some cleaners trying out Drysolv as a “drop-in” replacement for perc; and continued growth of that oldest of cleaning methods,
water, now known as wetcleaning.
And what about perc? The editorial above and two stories on the front page of
this issue tell of a solvent under increasing pressure from regulators. Still,
it remains the most widely used drycleaning solvent and as such any changes
that affect its use, whether government regulations, consumer perceptions or
landlord preferences and prohibitions, has wide ramifications for the industry.
Thus one year later, a key piece of advice in that DLI White Paper merits
repeating:
“In light of the regulatory/political issues and media scrutiny of perc, DLI
believes that a member considering an investment in a new drycleaning system
would be best advised to first consider alternative solvents and to evaluate
them against the difficulties of using perc today.” (The entire White Paper is available at www.natclo.com/0708/whitepaper.htm.)
Cleaners would be wise to consider that at some point in the future there will
be no alternative to “the alternatives.”
