Dry cleaner goes green with eco-friendly soap

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>> Karl Huie: Pacific Heights Cleaners has been around since 1969. It was started by my parents in San Francisco, and it's mostly been a local neighborhood business from the start. Starting about 3-1/2 years ago, we went green, which means that we do dry cleaning without using any solvents. We've taken that one step beyond by offering reusable products like reusable garment bags, reusing our hangers, and extending our green cleaning even into our laundry by using green plant-based soaps as opposed to high alkalized soaps. Even though that the green dry cleaning has been around for about 10 or 15 years, we didn't feel that society would accept it 10 or 15 years ago, but now we feel that society has reached a point where the green is a factor and people are willing to search out green businesses. The dry cleaning solvent itself that most dry cleaners use is perchloroethylene, and that has been known to cause cancer and contaminate groundwater. What we use is what's referred to within the industry as wet cleaning. It uses a water-based cleaning system mixed with an esthetic protein soap. Miela Professional has spent about $100 million designing a wet-cleaning machine that is completely different than a washing machine. This machine, with the technology of the detergents, allows us to clean all the garments, so we can clean wools, we can clean silks, we can clean rayon, angora, cashmere. Anything that you normally can clean in the dry cleaning solvents, we can clean with this wet cleaning system. We believe in helping everybody make a transition to green, so we help other dry cleaners convert. We show all the dry cleaners our cleaning system. We show and teach our customers about our dry cleaning system. We teach our customers how to clean their clothes at home effectively. We're in the midst of the recession as we speak in 2010, and we will have our best grossing year ever in the history of our business which has been in business for over 40 years.

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