National Clothesline

Two years ago, when Gordon Shaw opened his Hangers Cleaners in San Diego, he became the first cleaner in California to use only CO2 as its solvent. Now he’s opened a second Hangers, and has plans for more in San Diego and Orange counties.

CO2 may not be for every operator, he says, but in San Diego, he has found it not only commercially viable and he’s also thriving in an otherwise stagnant market.

Shaw hasn’t always worked on the cutting edge of cleaning technology and, in fact, was skeptical when he first met CO2 cleaning. He began his career in 1978 as a drycleaner in a “59¢ any garment plant,” using an Elco split pocket transfer machine with a Hoyt reclaimer. He owned and operated five plants

and three agencies between 1978 and 2000, rarely missing a Clean Show or California Fabricare Show. At the 1995 New Orleans Clean Show he saw a small, box-like device that a scientist in a lab coat told him cleans a piece of cloth in liquid CO2.

He laughed and said “What are they thinking? That’ll never work.” But he kept up with the development of CO2 at subsequent trade shows. After the 1999 show in Orlando, he packed up a bag of customers’ clothes and a 10-year-old stinking wool high school band uniform and visited Micell Technologies in Raleigh, NC, and the first liquid carbon dioxide plant, owned by the Williams family in Wilmington, NC.

He left impressed by what he had seen — and what he did not smell.

“On the plane back to San Diego, I felt more excited and energized by my industry than I had in years, he said” He reflected on something industry guru Bill Seitz once said, “Don’t resist change, embrace it,” and decided to do some embracing. The next day he put his last plant up for sale and started looking for locations.

The location he found was in a 600,000-sq.-ft. IKEA/Costco anchored center which had no drycleaner due to the owner’s fears of soil and groundwater contamination. It took several months of work, but he finally convinced the developer to let him come in with his CO2 plant.

He received the keys in December, 2000, and started build-out in January 2001. His 20,000-lb. CO2 drycleaning machine was delivered and rigged into position, followed closely by a truckload of wetcleaning and finishing equipment in early March. He and the Micell engineer ran the machine for the first time on Easter Sunday, 2001, and he opened for business on April 16.

In going through the regulatory process for the new business, one of Shaw’s first calls was to San Diego County Air Pollution Control District. He explained what he was doing and was told that he may not need a permit, only an exemption.

The next day he received the good news that he did not need a permit or an exemption. “And when you get running, we’d like a tour,” the regulators told him.

In conjunction with Earth Day celebrations that April, he was awarded the 2001 Clean Air award by the County of San Diego. San Diego County Hazmat required the normal business plan/emergency contact information. The San Diego city fire marshall has jurisdiction over compressed gas applications and required a permit, 24-hour pressure test on piping, verification of quantities of CO2, then a tour for all inspectors.

Reviewing those first two years of operation, Shaw counts over 139,000 pieces cleaned in over 2,600 loads with a total poundage of 136,100 pounds.

Like any piece of equipment, his machine, a second-generation G300 MICO2 machine, needs occasional servicing. But he has had only one incident where he was down long enough to affect promise time. He also has had fewer than 10 claims due to CO2 drycleaning and has rejected fewer than seven garments.

“The operation of the machine and the principles used to clean clothes are like any other machine,” Shaw said. “The wheel rotates and reverses, the liquid is pumped through filters and distilled. There is a wash, drain, extract, vapor recovery, distillation and residue dump step in every cycle.”

He is currently on his eighth carbon canister and has changed the particulate filter approximately 30 times.

“The filter bag has 5-micron particulate filtration, which, in combination with the huge carbon canister, yields very white whites,” he said, adding that changing a CO2 filter is a very straight-forward process, and quite different than dealing with a spent perc filter.

“Changing a perc filter is a sloppy, stinky procedure,” he said, due to both the content and the chemical properties of the solvent.

“With perc, there is a great deal of lint which forms a slimy coating on the filtration surface, essentially plugging it before it filters much dirt, while with CO2 there is virtually no lint.

“The other difference is the chemical properties of the solvent. CO2 is far better at penetrating due to its gas-like properties even in a liquid state, so it can work its way through smaller openings. Smaller openings trap more dirt and less lint and slimy coating.

He’s also happy to be rid of the dirty business of emptying still bottoms, or sludge.

“With liquid CO2, our distillation is done at low temperature, in the 100-120 degree range, so not only do we not boil sweat and oils back into our systems like a 240-260 degree distillation can, but even still residue has no nasty odors,” he said.

Surfactant usage is a bit high, he reports, while the cost is comparable to a top quality perc detergent.

“We use 22 ounces per cycle, which maintains about a 4 percent charge. I have four pretreatments that I can use compatibly with CO2, as well as the standard approved spotting agents on the board. I have nothing containing tri-chlor in the plant.

“The CO2 itself is delivered by Westair, who also services about 900 restaurant accounts in San Diego,” Shaw said. “It is beverage-grade CO2 and I have been told by Westair that the CO2 used by me and every Burger King and Mickey Dee’s in Southern California is a by-product of oil refining, so we are reusing something that normally would be wasted. As for volume used, Hangers is comparable to one of the Indian casinos. Each load exhausts 10 pounds at the completion of the cycle, and that exhaust is as harmless as the air we all exhale.

“I pay $.18 per pound for CO2, which is approximately $.035 per garment,” Shaw said.

Safety is paramount. Every part of the machine that contains pressure has safeties, burst discs, and monitoring to ensure that any releases are done safely to the atmosphere through a four-inch header.

“We also have a CO2 monitor and alarm system, our own 21st century version of the canary in a coal mine,” he explained. “The machine is computerized and can be monitored, diagnosed and reprogrammed remotely via an installed modem.”

Says Shaw, “In our industry, there is ‘cleaning dirty clothes’ and there is ‘cleaning not-so-dirty clothes’. With dirty clothes, since CO2 is not as aggressive, it does not cut heavy soil as well, thus the need for more time spotting, IF you are handling dirty clothes.

“If, however, you are in an upper-end market full of not-so-dirty clothes, there is not a better way to go. That same, less aggressive characteristic produces a softer garment, with true color, less wear, and best of all, absolutely no bacteria related or chemical smell.”

Employee Alfredo De La Mora worked in perc plants for years before starting at Hangers. He describes the difference in the two work environments: “The noxious smell is gone. The air in the plant is natural, which makes it a more pleasant work place. In working with the garments, the colors after cleaning are the same as before cleaning. They stay the same. Whites stay brighter, garments smell better. From the CO2 machine I get perhaps two pounds from the particulate filter once a month and the carbon filter lasts three months.”

De La Mora is one of 11 employees at Hangers. Some have worked in the drycleaning industry for as long as 13 years. The same four production personnel who started with the plant two years ago are still there. Shaw says the “no smell and no toxicity environment is great for employee retention.”

Because the cost of operating is a little higher, a CO2 cleaner has to be a little higher in pricing, Shaw said. “Best care of your customer’s garments and care of really fine garments, this is the way to go. You have to choose your market area and not go into one where price is the primary consideration for your customers.”

Shaw’s original contract was to become a Hangers franchisee of Micell Corporation, but in December of 2001 Micell sold the Hangers trademarks, intellectual property, and remaining MICO machines to Cool Clean Technologies. With the purchase of Chart Industries CO2 technology early in 2002, Cool Clean became a leader in CO2 drycleaning technology. Shaw became a licensee of the process. Cool Clean is currently developing additional locations, operating in much the same way as Micell. Shaw described the transition to Cool Clean as “seamless.”

During it’s two years in business, Hangers San Diego has given tours to close to 100 drycleaners, investors, environmentalists, and other interested parties from all over the U.S. and from as far away as Turkey, the United Kingdom, Belgium, New Zealand and Canada. The business has been featured on TV news programs eight times. In addition to the tours and phone calls, Shaw is always ready to participate in alternative technology panels, voice his opinions, testify at Congressional Hearings and debate the merits of CO2 on the Fabricare Forum on the internet.

He wants to share the knowledge he has gained with anyone who wants to listen. “I truly believe that what I am doing here in San Diego and telling the world about is a huge service to the entire industry. Of course I’d like to see more CO2 plants. That would cause advancement in the technology and spur on more R&D, which would benefit my operation and growth. But also if my CO2 activities cause other drycleaners to keep an open mind, look at their options, and plan for five to ten years in the future, then it can only help lead to a more professional industry.”