National Clothesline


	A group of SBAP representatives gathered around Jon Meijer, IFI’s vice president of membership, to hear an explantion of the drycleaning processes during their recent tour of IFI headquarters in Silver Spring, MD.

Government officials responsible for compliance with environmental rules got a first-hand look at the drycleaning industry this spring when they toured the International Fabricare Institute headquarters in Silver Spring, MD.

The tour came at the end of a four-day national conference in Baltimore, MD, sponsored by the EPA’s Small Business Ombudsman and Small Business Assistance Program. The SBO/SBAP program is part of the Clean Air Act that requires each state to have a compliance assistance program. The conference brings together representatives of the state programs and federal EPA officials to discuss compliance programs and how to make them more effective. For the Baltimore conference, small business leaders were invited to offer their ideas for improving compliance and communication.

Drycleaners attending included Gary Dawson of Belleair Bluffs Cleaners in Belleair Bluffs, FL, and IFI’s District 3 Director, and IFI members Dale Kaplan of Kaplan’s Careful Cleaners in Camp Hill, PA, Gary McCracken of Clothesline Drycleaners in Boise, ID, and Jim Shepherd of Ruston Cleaners in Ruston, LA.

Also at the conference was IFI CEO Bill Fisher who discussed ways the Small Business Assistance Programs could use communications networks already in place through trade associations to get their news on the street.

“Just about every industry has a national trade association, and just about every national trade association has regional offices,” Fisher said. “Each of these associations keeps in touch with its membership through some kind of publication. EPA could easily get a message in those publications and make sure the right people are getting the information they need to comply.”

Throughout the conference, drycleaners were mentioned many times in discussions of how to improve the regulatory process for small business.

The afternoon of the final day of the conference was spent at IFI where about 20 conference participants visited


	IFI analyst Chris Allsbrooks leads a tour of the analysis lab.

each of the IFI departments to learn about the drycleaning industry and how IFI works.

At one stop, they learned about the differences and similarities of the various cleaning processes from Jon Meijer, IFI’s vice president of membership. At another, IFI analyst Chris Allsbrooks explained the different causes of garment damage and how poorly made garments can lead to unsatisfactory results in cleaning.

State and federal contact information and compliance resources, including a guide for drycleaning, for the Small Business Assistance Program can be found on the SBPA web site: www.epa.gov/ttn/sbap/welcome.html.