Cameo Cleaners & Arthur Copeland

Posts Tagged ‘dry cleaning’

Earlier this week The New York Times published an article about zero waste design, essentially creating a garment without the normal 15 to 20% of wasted fabric going into landfills.

This design concept is not as easy as it sounds because when creating a garment the main concerns are fit and fashion. Therefore getting all of the pieces which make up the garment to fit into fabric with minimal waste involves compromises. Some of these compromises will involve supply lines and the existing infrastructure,  thus changes which can become very costly.

The zero waste campaign has the potential to be very beneficial to the dry cleaning industry, for it could initiate the shift to environmentally responsible dry cleaning. The secret to responsible dry cleaning lies in the cleaning and packaging methods.

Dry cleaning is a very wasteful industry based on cleaning and packaging processes. Many dry cleaners use wire hangers, reams of tissue and polyethylene bags as part of the process. Though wasteful, this type of packaging does prevent wrinkling and protects the freshly cleaned garments on their trip home.

Before you get too discouraged and swear off dry cleaning listen up for there is an alternative! Many dry cleaners offer re-usable fabric garment bags as well has re-usable plastic hangers. Tissue can be removed from packacking within  the body of the garment though wrinkling may occur without this addition.

My shops, Cameo Cleaners of Gramercy Park and Arthur Copeland Cleansers offer “Naked Cleaning” which is our dry cleaning process that cleans clothes without harmful petro-chemicals along and offers a re-useable garment bag (from Green Garmento), no tissue packaging and re-useable hangers. What you get back is your wardrobe free of all chemicals and packed without any waste at all!

Our chemical free dry cleaning process is accomplished using the Solvair process which uses liquid CO2 in place of petro-chemicals. You can go to our website for more information.

Thanks for listening. Jerry Pozniak

New York is hot, hot, hot today.

Not just regular NYC July hot; but “someone is blowing a blow dryer on me” hot.

So hot that the New York Times wrote a story about frying an egg on the sidewalk. No, you can’t fry an egg on the sidewalk, but you can sear tuna.

So what does this opressive heat have to do with keeping your clothes clean?

Perspiration. Sweat.

On days like yesterday and today your sweat can take a tremendous toll on your wardrobe. Wrinkles we can fix, odor we can remove; but sweat can discolor and ruin your clothes, and that we can’t fix.

Certain fabrics and dyes will react badly to sweat and actually discolor. Underarms, collars and the backs of garments are all areas that we have seen damaged by sweat.

Silk and certain cottons seem to be most affected. We have seen French blue shirts and red silk blouses rendered unwearable by sweat.

Usually the underarms are the first to go with an orange stain appearing, though it’s not a stain. It’s sweat causing the dye to fail.  Sweat can act like a mild bleach and discolor dye.

What to do?

Try to minimize your perspiration on your clothes and clean them as soon as possible. The longer your perspiration remains in contact with the garment the greater the damage that can be caused.

Just get those duds off and into Cameo Cleaners or Arthur Copeland right away; you have enough to sweat about with the heat. Let the staff of Cameo Cleaners do their magic and make sure your sweat doesn’t damage your wardrobe.