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GreenEarthGreenEarthwww.GreenEarthCleaning.com

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This newsletter is printed on recycled paper with soy inks.

2009Winter

A N E W S L E T T E R T O H E L P Y O U T O G R O W Y O U R B U S I N E S SCopyright February, 2009 All Rights Reserved

An accident of fate: the GreenEarth storySometimes discoveries find you. A scientistworking on a cosmetic formulation was absentmindedly stirring a beaker of silicone with hisfinger, waiting for the Super Bowl to come onTV. When he pulled his finger out, he realizedthe silicone had removed the fats and dirtfrom his finger without drying it out. Hewondered if could do the same for clothes. Asearch of the nation’s top dry cleaners led himto Jim Barry, then CEO of the nation’s largestdry cleaning company. Jim was skeptical.Over theyears hehad lookedat a lot of alternativesolvents and none of them had panned out.Mired in multi-million dollar environmentalclean-ups, hewas actually thinking about gettingout of dry cleaning altogether. But the ideawas irresistible. If silicone was an effective drycleaning solvent, it could be the environmentalanswer dry cleaners so desperately needed.

Jim flew out to see a demonstration. Andwhat he saw was unbelievable. In a simplehome-made dry cleaning machine, the siliconewas able to remove soiling from garment after

garment. And the fabrics came out lookingand feeling better than they went in. It wasserendipity. The solutionwas christened“SB-32”(what elsewould you name something inventedduring Super Bowl XXXII?) and the processwas patented worldwide. Jim called twoother dry cleaners, Ron Benjamin and JimDouglas. “Meet me in Reno,” he said, “and

bring your checkbooks, this is big.” They did,and GreenEarth Cleaning was born.

In the ten years since that phone call, over1,400 licenses have been sold to the best andthe brightest operators in the industry.GreenEarth is now the world’s largestsolution provider for environmentally safe drycleaning. Anumber of “big name” companieshave also joined our team. Two, GE and P&G,

were actually founding members. How didsuch a small entrepreneurial venture end upwith two Fortune 10 companies on its board?Again, opportunity simplyknocked. We initiallyapproached GE Silicones about being asupplier to the dry cleaning industry. GEhad researched many uses of silicone, butnever dry cleaning. They were intrigued.After studying our patents, they decided theapplication was so revolutionary they askedto join our venture. Shortly after, GEhappened to mention us to P&G. Siliconeis a main ingredient in many personal andfabric care products, and P&G had long beenone of GE’s largest clients. P&G was notsurprised to hear about the superior chemistryof silicone in fabricare; they understoodsilicone cleaning very well and in fact hadmany patents of their own surrounding thetechnology. What intrigued P&Gwas the ideaof patenting the entire process of dry cleaningwith silicone. They too asked to join ourboard. Again, serendipity. P&G’s considerablefabric care expertise has been a valuable asset to

.”

SavetheDate!!Clean’09AffiliateMeeting

inNewOrleans.Markyourcalendarforthisyear’sCleanShowinNewOrleans!TheshowrunsfromThursday,June18ththroughSundayJune21st.

WewillbeholdingourAffiliateMeetingonFridaynight,June19thfrom5:30p.m.-7:00p.m.intheVieuxCarreroomattheHotelMonteleone.TopicsfortheAffiliatemeetingincludedevelopingandmarketingroutes,GreenEarthCustomLicensinganddetailsonbignewsweplantounveilattheCleanShow.Afterward,therewillbeanopenreceptionfrom7:00p.m.-9:00p.m.downstairsintheQueenAnneroomwhereyoucannetworkwithindustryfriendsandpartnersandenjoymusic,foodandbeverages.

Continued on Page 2

Continued from Page 1our Affiliates, who today benefit from the pioneering work P&G did to optimize additives for silicone’s unique cleaning chemistry.

After the 2002 IFI Fellowship Study confirmed that GreenEarth cleaned comparably to the industry standard perc without the environmental concerns, a

number of other “big brands” also sought out GreenEarth. Johnson Service Group, the world’s largest branded dry cleaning operation, became a Master Licensor

for the UK in 2003. The same year, Sanyo Electric became our Master Licensor in Japan andMen’sWearhouse became anAffiliate. Before selecting GreenEarth,

Men’s Wearhouse conducted their own extensive review of the efficacy, efficiency, toxicity and environmental viability of all dry cleaning solvent alternatives.

Why? They had a lot at stake bringing their tuxedo cleaning in-house. GreenEarth’s significantly better performance on all key metrics made the decision easy.

MW Tux is now the world’s largest tuxedo rental business.

Themost recent “big brand” to associate with GreenEarth is P&G’sTide detergent. Tide

is the sixth most recognized brand in the world and the largest in P&G’s impressive

stable of family-favorite brands. As part of a test of a Tide-branded dry cleaning

offering, P&G has recently joined our ranks as a GreenEarth Affiliate. The three

Tide Dry Cleaners in Kansas City have enjoyed a lot of visibility, as has GreenEarth.

Tide uses GreenEarth exclusively for dry cleaning processing and markets

GreenEarth technology to its consumers. Brand recognition like this benefits our

Affiliates who have the advantage of being “Nationally known but locally owned.”

Why do so many successful brands and companies want to partner with us? We’d

like to say its entirely because of the friendly, open and honest way we run the

company. But, we readily admit, it’s because we have something they don’t—

worldwide patents surrounding the remarkable science of dry cleaning with liquid

silicone. We don’t sell machines, solvent or detergent; our business is built on

licensing the right to use our worldwide patented process and the GreenEarth

trademark that describes it. Protecting our intellectual property is the primary way we protect the investment ourAffiliates make in GreenEarth with their annual

license fee, and we invest a considerable amount of money every year doing it. We now

have eight different U. S. patents (and many more in forty-two countries around the world)

ensuring the absolute exclusivity of the GreenEarth process—any dry cleaner using any

amount of silicone in their dry cleaning machine must have a license from GreenEarth. We

have also trademarked the GreenEarth name and logo to make sure that you can advertise

your difference with the assurance that you have unique brand power. As a GreenEarth

Affiliate, you belong to a very exclusive club of progressive dry cleaners!

Membership has its privileges. Although technically the sole purpose of the license fee is

to grant rights to our process and trademarks, we work hard on many fronts—environ-

mental advocacy, garment labeling, operational and technical assistance, customer service,

etc.—to provide additional support to help our Affiliates succeed. Perhaps the most

important “bonus” we provide is marketing support. As former dry cleaners ourselves,

we understand how difficult it is to simultaneously run a quality operation and market your

business. That’s why every year we try to add something new and useful to your marketing toolbox. Last year we developed a new consumer-oriented

website to educate your customers about the GreenEarth difference. We also developed direct mail postcards and an online web-to-print service to

customize, print and mail them. This year, in addition to upgraded customization features for our postcards, we will be introducing a new in-store poster,

van wraps, tools to market route services, and customizable templates for Valpak and Money Mailer direct mail.

It’s been a remarkable ride since that scientist first dipped his finger in fate

a little over ten years ago. We are grateful to our Affiliates and partners for

the continued confidence you place in us, and the important ways you have

contributed to our success. And, despite the fact that our country is facing

perhaps one of the most challenging economic times in its history, we are

genuinely excited about the future for ourAffiliates. We have been working on

some exciting new offerings that we believe will help you to continue to

reinvent your business and change the way the industry cleans in significant

ways. It is too early to share details now, but our goal is to make an

announcement at this year’s Clean Show. It may be our biggest news since

we first introduced GreenEarth to the industry at Clean ’99!

Competitors claiming to be “organic”? What you can do.In some markets, the practice of “green washing” has gotten aggressive. Dry cleaners that mislead consumers with advertising and signage sayingthey are “organic” are unethical to be sure. It’s tempting to fight back. Our advice: in advertising, always be competitive ratherthan comparative. Comparative advertising is disparaging and reflects on your character as a business; it’s seldom good business.Some options that we feel will help you expose your organic competitors while still being judicious, discrete, and justified:

Train your counter staff with talk points and instructions on handling this topic.When people come in, if they ask you

or your counter staff about the organic claims your competitors are making, a simple and easy to remember explanation is

that The term organic means something very different with chemicals than it does with food. Any chemical with a carbonbackbone is “organic”. Gasoline is organic, but that doesn’t mean you want to clean your clothes with it. Here is abrochure that explains what make GreenEarth truly eco-friendly. Then simply hand them the GreenEarth brochure about

your silicone process to take home and read.

GreenEarth Custom Licensing ProgramOne of the things we are most proud of is the success ourAffiliates have enjoyed when they market their GreenEarth difference. Over and over again, marketing

GreenEarth as their “Intel Inside” has proven meaningful to their customers and their bottom line. As a result, we have received many requests for the right

to use the brand in a more prominent way. Because we believe “A rising tide lifts all boats”, as a means to grow brand recognition for all Affiliates, and as

part of our commitment to continually enhancing our license offering, we have recently begun to entertain requests for custom licensing agreements.

We plan to announce more details about GreenEarth’s Custom Licensing program at

our Clean ’09 Affiliate Meeting. In some situations, a GreenEarth Custom License

can mean the ability to put the GreenEarth name on the door. In others, it could ensure

geographic protection preventing any new licenses from entering a market. For all,

there are select criteria and requirements to be met. Custom licenses are, as the name

implies, custom. Every agreement will by definition be different. Our goal is to

individually tailor each liscense to address the needs of our Affiliates and their

markets. The custom licensing program will not just create advantages for the

Custom Licensee, it will take into account the needs of the existing Affiliates in that

market as well. Of course, standard licenses will remain the mainstay of our business,

and again this year, we will continue to offer them at the $2,500 rate (for the past ten

years we have held the license fee constant at $2,500 without raising it). Our goal is to

provide every Affiliate an option that helps them to succeed.

The Johnsons Team, Leeds Road, Harrogate Branch

Tide Dry Cleaners Store in Leawood KS

The Men’s Wearhouse 1,000,000 Sq. Ft.Plant & Distribution Facility

GreenEarth CleaningOver six billion years in the making.

®®

Keep other customer education materials behind your counter and create opportunities to hand them out.We have created a“Organic Cleaning Consumer Alert” flier for this purpose;you can find it in our online marketing center in the“Downloads” section, in the folder labeled “FightingOrganic Claims”. There you will also find a couple ofpublished articles about the misleading claims that organiccleaners are making. Print them off and keep them under thecounter to hand out to customers.

Go to the local TV reporters. Green washing has teeth to it because it is controversial and very timely. You can send the articlesmentioned above to the TV and paper reporters as to get their attention.

Go to the papers and pitch them on doing a feature story on the misleading claims of organic cleaners. To help you in this effort, wehave ghost written a completed article you can submit to the paper. It is also available in our online marketing center under downloads. Thesedays, with budget cuts, newspapers frequently don’t have the staff to do the research and writing of a story, and they will take an articlesubmission and run it without changing it much. The article is written to be as “objective” as possible in the spirit of informing readers abouttheir dry cleaning choices, but you will see that of course GreenEarth comes out as the best choice. The pitch you want to make is that thereis too much green washing out there and consumers deserve to understand the truth about organic claims being falsely used in anunregulated marketplace. Getting a story like this placed will work much harder for you than any paid advertising ever could. “Earnedmedia” like this has third party credibility that resonates very effectively with readers.

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GreenEarth Cleaners in Castle Pines North, CO

_______________________________________________________________January 11, 2009 By MIREYA NAVARRO

It May Market Organic Alternatives, but Is Your Cleaner Really Greener?

Dumping a pile of jackets, pants and shirts on the counter of a West Village dry cleaner, Wayne

Kasserman had a pungent problem: A skunk had sprayed outside a Los Angeles guest house

where he was staying, and the stink had penetrated the closets and his clothes.

However strong the smell, though, he wanted the antidote to be gentle on the planet. Mr.

Kasserman, 32, an actor and producer who lives in New York, chose Green Apple Cleaners,

which advertises “nontoxic” methods that it says will not leave harmful residues in garments or

the environment.

He had no shortage of businesses to choose from. In New York and around the country, dry-

cleaning stores have increasingly sprouted signs reading “organic” or “green,” as

environmentally conscious consumers look for alternatives to traditional dry cleaning and its

use of the solvent perchloroethylene. Prolonged contact with that solvent, known as PCE or perc,

has been linked in some studies to cancer and neurological troubles like vision problems, and its

use is strictly regulated.

But marketing claims for the alternatives are not regulated at all. So customers like Mr.

Wasserman, who said he was not sure just what methods Green Apple used, are left to hope for

the best. And sometimes the cleaning methods advertised as environmentally sound are

anything but.

Government and environmental watchdogs say many cleaners are turning to methods that are

only slightly less toxic than perc. The National Cleaners Association, a trade group, says some

businesses are using the term “organic” in a blatantly misleading way — not in the sense of a

chemical-free peach, but in the chemistry-class sense of containing carbon, the element found in

all organic compounds, including perc.

Under that standard, noted Alan Spielvogel, technical director of the cleaners’ association, “I

could clean garments with nuclear waste and I could call myself organic.”

Consumer Alert Dry cleaning Services Misleadingly Branded asNatural and Organic

eware of dry cleaners making claims about dry cleaning your clothes using “organic” or “natural” methods. Marketing claims for dry cleaning are not regulated like food claims. The National Cleaners

Association, a dry cleaning industry trade group, says some operators are using these terms in blatantly misleading ways.

BWhat is organic dry cleaning?

When a food product has an FDA-regulated “organic” label, consumers can trust that no harmful chemicals were used in its manufacture. But “organic” means something very different when it describes the chemicals used in dry cleaning.

In dry cleaning, “organic” only means that the chemicals used to clean clothes are structured on a chain of carbon, the element found in all organic compounds. Gasoline is organic, and so are most of the petrochemical solvents used by the dry cleaning industry for the last 150 years.

Dry cleaners marketing “organic” cleaning methods are technically accurate but socially irresponsible. They are counting on you not to understand the difference between a chemical-free “organic” peach and a petroleum-based “organic” dry cleaning chemical.

The dangers of “organic” cleaning methods

If your cleaner claims to be using “organic” methods to clean your clothes, they are using either perchloroethylene, also known as PCE or perc, or petroleum (hydrocarbon) solvent, often marketed under the brand names DF2000 or EcoSolv.

Perc is considered by the EPA to be an air and water toxin and dangerous to human health. Exposure can lead to increased risk of cancer, reduced fertility and eye, nose and throat irritation. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health estimates that 85% of dry cleaners still use this 1940’s era solvent.

Many dry cleaners also use hydrocarbon solvents. According to Judith S. Schreiber, chief scientist for the New York State attorney general’s Environmental Protection Bureau, hydrocarbons are “a cleaned up version of gasoline” and only slightly less toxic than perc. Hydrocarbon solvents are classified

by the EPA as VOCs (volatile organic compounds), they are likely contributors to smog formation. They are also listed by the EPA as neurotoxins and skin and eye irritants for workers.

Environmentally safe dry cleaning methods

CO2 Cleaning. Converts CO2 gas under extremely high pressure to a liquid. Avoid CO2 cleaners using Solvair systems, which use glycol-ether during the wash cycle. Glycol-ethers are a family of VOC chemicals used in antifreeze and household cleaning products.

GreenEarth. Uses liquid silicone, essentially liquefied sand. Clear, odor-less and non-toxic, silicone degrades to sand and trace amounts of water and CO2 when released to the environment. Excellent fabricare benefits.

Professional Wet Cleaning. Uses water like home washing machines. Be sure to inquire if 100% of dry cleaning uses this method and whether detergents and pre-spotting agents have toxic or VOC properties. Wet cleaning machines drain directly into the city water system.

Caution about Certified Environmental Dry Cleaners

Any dry cleaner, even a perc cleaner, can hang up a “Certified Environmental Dry Cleaner’ sign if they pass a test certifying they have the knowledge and ability to maintain their facility in an environmentally responsible way. Do not rely on signs in the window. Ask your dry cleaner to tell you exactly what process is being used.

More information

www.findco2.com

www.greenearthcleaning.com

www.professionalwetcleaning.com

BREAKING NEWS AS THIS NEWSLETTER IS GOING TO PRINT: Southern California regulators have issued amoratorium on any new air permits for VOC creating processes. Dry cleaners using hydrocarbon, Solvair, DrySolv etc. will no longer be ableto obtain an air permit to operate dry cleaning machines. We will keep you updated as more information becomes available.