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Our Sustainable Practices

Conventional Practice
Based on our market research and talking to industry veterans, these are the status quo practices in the laundry industry.
Standard laundry companies pick up commercial laundry in vehicles like 20-foot box trucks -- think UPS vans, but older and usually more poorly maintained. On a good day, these trucks will get 6 mpg. Oftentimes, these laundry trucks travel in from far-away suburban industrial parks, sometimes as far away as Delaware or the Lehigh Valley. Obviously, none of this is good for the environment, but it
Many conventional facilities rely on dated "hard mount" washing machines. These machines are called "hard mounts" because they must be bolted directly to a concrete foundation to absorb the shock of the spin cycle. As a result, their spin cycles are not very powerful -- meaning that laundry comes out of these washing machines with a lot more water in it, which leads to longer time and more energy in the dryer.
Commercial laundries are infamous for using harsh detergents and chemicals. These chemicals go way beyond anything you could buy in a supermarket -- speaking of the industry standard for cleaning laundry from restaurants, one detergent salesman told us "It
Commercial laundries rely on lots of hot water, and often have outdated water heaters and boilers that are fairly inefficient.
Gas dryers are standard.
Linens are wrapped in individual shrink-wrap packages and sent out in plastic bags.

Our Current Practice

These are the steps we
We pick up all our laundry on a trailer attached to a bicycle. This trailer can haul up to about 600 gym towels at a time, or something like 15 residential laundry loads, and makes great time between our Center City customers and our Center City facility, at 16th and South Streets.
We use a combination of brand new "soft mount" and hi-efficiency "hard mount" washers. These machines have a spin cycles that reach up to 800 RPM, meaning that clothes and laundry come out of the washers fairly dry. This then reduces the amount of time and energy needed to dry clothes in the dryer, which saves energy and is better for your clothes, too.
We use natural, biodegradable, hypoallergenic, no-scent-added, locally-made Sun and Earth brand detergents for all of our personal laundry. It
We have a brand new, Energy-star certified water heater that is pretty phenomenal. Moreover, when possible, we try to use detergents and wash processes that allow us to avoid the use of hot water altogether.
We use standard gas dryers.
We deliver linens to customers in reusable unbleached canvas bags or reusable plastic containers.

Our Green Dream

These are the things we dream about when we think about green laundry. There are definitely a number of technical and economic barriers between us and this vision, but we
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We know that gas-fired tumble dryers will be the mainstay of drying for quite a while, but we
We love reusable containers, and are currently negotiating with a fair trade manufacturer of laundry bags to start making some just for us.