Interesting 'Good Housekeeping' article on Green Dry Cleaning
Good Housekeeping wrote a rather interesting article recently about Green Drycleaning and compared its attributes to that of traditional drycleaning. They defined traditional as cleaners using Perc.
I've been rather impressed with Good Housekeeping in the past, their articles about our industry are well researched and well written. It started off very well, but took a wrong turn on a bad assumption.
They compare the solvents by using several types of fabric with several types of spots. They then draw their conclusions on which performed best as a customer would by picking up the garments and checking to see which removed the variety of spots best.
They missed one really important part. The solvent doesn't remove the stains in drycleaning any more than the water does in laundering. In this respect they are the same, they merely offer suspension of the solids and the detergents are removing the soil.
More often in drycleaning than in laundry, pre and post-spotting and recleaning are the true ways spots are removed. The most credit should be given to the inspectors and spotting techs at the given cleaners, not the solvent. Inspector find the spots that are not removed and the spotter techs work by hand using gentle agents, a steam want, vacuum board, and some other brushes and utensils to remove the spots. In most cases it is then recleaned to remove all traces of spotting agents.
Much of what is spilled on dry cleaned items is water soluble. This means they will not breakdown and suspend in solvent, just the way oil doesn't dissolve in water. Spots must be removed this way.
So from environmental perspective I found them to be very accurate, on a performance basis they missed giving the credit to the staff of the cleaners that was awarded best spot removal.
http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/product-testing/reviews-tests/cleaning-products/green-dry-cleaning
