Due to growing environmental concerns, commercial laundries are under increasing pressure to adopt sustainable laundry practices. The nature of detergents, rising water and electricity costs along with growing awareness about the importance of sustainability are prompting—even compelling—businesses to be more environmentally friendly and conscientious about how they use finite resources.

Given the importance of doing so, adopting technologies, and resorting to eco-friendly methods and chemicals that can turn your business into a sustainable force in the industry. It can also contribute in reducing costs, boosting revenue, and improving long-term prospects.

We spoke to Rajkumar Shrivastav, Head-Laundry Course at Professional Laundry Education, India to understand how a sustainable laundry can be built. 

Building a “sustainable” laundry requires thorough study of industrial laundry as a subject that also dives into hotels, hospitals, retail or semi retail. Each case is different and very specific and the model varies from country to country. With today’s tight competition in the hospitality sector, each laundry unit is trying to keep its operating cost at minimum.

To build a “sustainable” laundry, it is essential to designate the expense profile of the laundry unit. It starts from design, selection and type of machines, utility machines sizes and services, production requisites, manpower training related to quality standards, existing current market rate and services to customers. All these factors are to be planned and designed for peak and break-even capacities. It is also important to monitor each variable regularly in order to facilitate control on energy and manpower cost over the periods, which will help in limiting the expenses.

Complete automation may not be a solution as may be the case in US and European countries for sustainability and higher profits. If we examine minutely, the expense profile of a laundry unit consists of manpower salary, water, steam,chemicals,power,transport,maintenance and others. The percentage for each is specific and will largely depend on your design pattern and laundry rate existing at that time. Of course, we can’t forget to keep in mind the investment and borrowed capital for the said laundry project. So, it is tricky but we should not forget that this will make a solid foundation for a “sustainable” laundry unit. Therefore, here we can say that largely a “sustainable” laundry will depend on how you “build” it i.e. the specific design. For example, if we consider two units of 10T/day capacity having different sizes and types of machines installed, we will ultimately have different expense profiles.

Presently there are plenty of options available in choosing laundry machines and energy use for hospitality, retail and semi retail sectors. As far as “stable operation” of the unit is concerned, manpower can be trained for the highest quality standards of linen for the required laundry sector.

Therefore when you design a specific laundry, you should be indisputably clear about operation cost and profitability before you make any purchases for the laundry plant and machinery. One should also be clear about numbers of employees (both skilled and unskilled), water requirement, electricity consumed, steam/gas consumed, chemical used, time of operation, breakdown time compensation, service distance of customers, availability of alternates in all commodities of operation and cost involved in services in emergencies. These factors will help you to optimize your operation cycle i.e. systems. One should have a proper plan before making any purchases. This intelligence will help in making a long term  “sustainable” laundry. However the minor changes will occur during the operation period over the years.

To summarize, we can say that the key points for “sustainable” laundry are:

1. Appropriate laundry plant facilities (for peak-optimum load).
2. Operation cycle standardization (system). 
3. Trained staff and regular updating.
4. Laundry operation controls - QSC balance.
5. Regular motivation of staff for prolonged association. 
6. Regular customer interaction/market study.
7. Proper maintenance of all machines and equipment and spares.