Carbon dioxide cleans green

Dry cleaner uses cooled-gas process

By Janet Forgrieve, Rocky Mountain News
October 30, 2004

Drop off the dry cleaning, pick it up a few days later and cross that chore off the list.

It's likely most consumers give little thought to what happens between drop-off and cross-off - they just know the clothes come back clean and pressed.

A new Denver company has given it considerable thought.

Revolution Cleaners, which launched in early August, says its carbon dioxide-based dry cleaning process will let customers clean green without a change in habits.

Behind the scenes, the company has instituted a host of environmentally friendly procedures, said managing partner Rusty Perry, but customers will pay the same price and still get their clothes back the way they want them.

Prices at Revolution's three stores - in Cherry Creek, Washington Park and Boulder - are comparable to other high-end cleaners, Perry said. The two Denver stores are remodels of existing, traditional dry cleaners, while the store in Boulder is new.

Biodiesel-powered vans truck the clothes to a 5,000-square- foot cleaning plant in Denver, where Revolution's $75,000 cleaning machine uses liquid carbon dioxide instead of chemicals to clean customers' clothes.

The machine's price tag is more than twice as high as that for equipment needed to dry clean using chemical solvents, said managing partner Rusty Perry, but it saves over the long term since the carbon-dioxide machine uses less electricity.

Every week, the number of 30-pound loads the machine cleans increases, partners say.

Revolution was created by four friends - two lawyers, an insurance agent and a mortgage broker - who wanted to start something different.

"We decided we needed to get into something entrepreneurial," said Perry who, along with Steve Madsen, manages the day-to-day operations at the 15- employee company.

Talk led to dry cleaning, and the partners researched environmentally friendly techniques, finally settling on the relatively new CO2 process, which until recently had been prohibitively expensive.

Nationally, about 85 percent of all dry cleaners use perchloroethylene or perc, a solvent that's considered hazardous waste.

Opinion is divided on whether a phase-out program in California, expected to eliminate perc by 2019, will spread to other states.

"California's always been different with everything regarding chemicals," said Jon Meijer, vice president for the Silver Spring, Md.-based International Fabricare Association, a trade group for dry cleaners.

Meijer said he doesn't believe there will be a widespread phase- out of the chemical because strict hazardous waste handling regulations, in place since 1986, virtually prohibit contamination.

A bigger fear is inheriting a problem at older plants, where perc was disposed of legally but hazardously before 1986.

There's also the specter of corruption.

Two years ago in Jefferson County, a judge sentenced Hormoz Pourat to 17 years in prison for unlawfully disposing of perc after he was paid by dry cleaners to safely dispose of it.

Instead, his company, AAD Disposal Inc., sent the waste to landfills in Nevada and Idaho, where there's a danger the stuff could eventually contaminate groundwater.

Revolution's partners see a potentially perc-free future, which means existing dry cleaners may have to switch to new methods at some point, Perry said.

While the use of perc may be the subject of discussion for decades, Revolution believes its less-controversial methods may be a draw for environmentally concerned consumers, especially if nothing really changes for them.

"A lot of people wouldn't necessarily pay more," Madsen said. "But if we're cost-competitive, there's no barrier."

forgrievej@RockyMountainNews.com or (303) 892-5191

Copyright 2004, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved.