Saving the Planet Through Laundry, the Clean Green Way

Picking your company uniforms requires more than good fashion sense. Your employees’ work

apparel makes your business’s first impression, but if you want to make a lasting impression,

your business can choose to act as a responsible member of the community — and that means

selecting a uniform company dedicated not only to making your business better, but making our

world better.

What does that have to do with your company work uniform? The choice of how you clean those

uniforms has an impact on our environment far more powerful than you might imagine.

Another important choice that may seem at first like a low priority is the type of cleaning towels,

napkins and cloths your company uses. These decisions have a far-reaching effect on the

planet and how we live in the world.

Too many companies rely on employees to bring uniforms home and wash them on their own.

This is clearly the less responsible choice. Large-scale laundering services that use the Clean

Green process offer a better way.

The 100-year-old Textile Rental Services Association administers the Clean Green certification

program, setting high standards for efficiency and conservation of resources. Compared to

sending service uniforms home with your workers, contracting with a Clean Green uniform

service to do your laundry uses one-third less water and only 50 percent of the energy.

Using a Clean Green laundry process saves roughly 25 gallons of water every week for every

worker in your company. If every company in the U.S. converted to the Clean Green process, it

would amount to 300 billion gallons per year saved.

In terms of energy use, switching over to the Clean Green process could save 100 trillion BTUs

per year — enough to supply power to a city of 300,000 people.

And what about the convenient, disposable napkins, paper towels and industrial wipes used by

many companies for routine cleaning, or the company cafeteria? While the choice is up to each

individual company, the responsible decision is not in question. Replace paper with reusable

textiles.

While disposable napkins and towels add up to almost 2 billion pounds of landfill waste every

year, a typical cloth napkin can be reused up to 100 times. Cloth shop towels create only one-

third the amount of solid waste of disposable paper wipes.

You might suppose that paper towels are easier to manufacture, but the truth is, cloth shop

towels require 90 percent less energy to make, process and deliver, according to data from the

Environmental Protection Agency.

Paper products overall compose more than one out of every four pounds of trash in landfills

across the country.

There is only one option for companies who want to function as responsible citizens. That’s the

Clean Green process, allowing companies to switch over to reusable textile products from

disposables — and to stop sending workers home to wash their own uniforms. Seek out uniform

rental companies that clearly display the TRSA’s Clean Green label.

Those two simple choices will put companies on the road to the responsible, sustainable

practices that create pride in your Clean Green uniform.

For more information visit us at http://www.prudentialuniforms.com.