On my current trip to New York I have seen several dry cleaning businesses advertise themselves as ‘organic’. This surprised me as I thought organic solvents were the main-stay of the dry cleaning world. It appears that…
so ‘organic’ really means NOT organic :rolleyes:
Not organic per se. “Environmentally friendly” would probably be better.
Supercritical carbon dioxide rocks, though.
So wait. They wash your clothes in a washtub and hang them to dry on a line? Is that what they offer?
It seems the word “organic” is becoming a lifestyle instead of what “organic” really means.
What’s interesting about the link is there are 8 reviews and if average the stars people gave it you get 3.75. Yet the link claims it gets 4.5 stars as it’s review. Hmm.
I think Charger is right, but organic has been verging on “organic” for a while now. Even when I was in college our nutrition professor warned us that organic didn’t mean pesticide free, just that they weren’t supposed to use chemical pesticides, but even that was on their honor not regulated.
What this refers to–at least from my point of view–is that “organic” dry cleaning doesn’t use organic solvents. It uses carbon dioxide, which is inorganic. “Traditional” dry cleaning uses halogenated organic solvents.
Better living through chemistry.
Dry cleaning solvents have changed over the years. They used to cause significant groundwater contamination. Perchloroethane or “Perc” was one, probably banned by now or nearly so.
Ancient Romans had a dry cleaning process that involved urine. All natural!