What is Environmental Responsibility?

At Bakker’s Fine Drycleaning, it means providing services, responsibly. Regardless of the industry you are in, there are steps everyone can take to be less impactful of our resources and the environment we all call home.

We are careful in choosing what environmental trends we adapt for our culture. It needs to make sense in our industry of cleaning. It must be safe for our staff, clients and community, and also must be effective.

We currently employ only ‘Alternative’ cleaning technologies to the ‘traditional’ drycleaning process.  We are 100% PERC FREE.  We use no PERC or related chemicals in our cleaning processes.  We have a way to carefully use water as a solvent in many cleaning applications. When water isn’t practical, we have the ability to use an organic and biodegradable cleaning solution (Iso-paraffin and SolvonK-4) that is recognized by garment manufacturers and designers as a “Drycleaning Process”.

We are Toxic Free, and have earned the King County Envirostar Award, 5 stars, the top honor!

Simply put, we have created processes to get outstanding results with little or no impact on our fragile environment.

Energy Efficiency

Our company as a whole has initiated a recycling program at all our stores. For the stores that don’t have on-site recycling facilities, we have our driver pick up at the store and deposit the recyclables into our recycling containers at our main production facility. We re-use our hangers that are in good condition when possible. We don’t use excessive packaging in our process only to have it thrown into the garbage by our customers.

We upgraded our standard florescent lighting throughout our production facility as well as our store locations to highly efficient T-8 bulbs with electronic ballasts, resulting in more light while consuming less energy.

In our laundry facility, our water is heated by capturing vented (otherwise wasted) heat from our boiler used to heat our presses and running it through a heat exchanger, thus using nearly no energy to heat our laundry water.

We launder items in a phosphorus-free enzyme detergent. The enzyme detergent’s cleaning characteristics are most efficient at a modest 130 – 140 degrees Fahrenheit. At this temperature we are washing at a much lower temperature of water than old methods (as high as 180F), and using less energy to heat the water to that temp. We recently changed to this detergent and washing method partly because it uses two fewer rinse cycles, saving thousands of gallons of water annually.

Timers and light sensors on exterior lights, signs and programmable thermostats is another small part of being ‘Efficient.’ The sum of all the ‘small parts’ equals a better world for all of us! We have, and continue to, make several strides to be good stewards of our environment.

Our newest delivery vehicle that provides home/office pick-up and delivery is a highly efficient diesel van with miles per gallon that exceed most cars.