Wringing out big savings for commercial laundries

Each year in the Asia Pacific region, more than 6,500 commercial laundries consume more than 35 billion gallons of water and 500 million cubic meters of gas to wash more than 20 billion pounds of textiles. And they must comply with strict — and costly — discharge regulations. 

That’s why five leading textile service groups in Australia and New Zealand turned to Ecolab to help:

• Reduce water and energy consumption
• Minimize their environmental footprint
• Improve wash quality

INNOVATION

To accomplish these goals, Ecolab deployed a circular water strategy with its BlueOcean™, Aquabatch™ and AquaDrain™ filtration systems. These state-of-the-art systems, combined with Ecolab’s wash process expertise, helped the laundries filter, recycle and reuse water. This not only reduced freshwater demand, it also cut gas consumption in boilers and dryers. Ecolab also implemented its latest 40C ultra-low temperature washing process, OxyGuard™ 40, which helped to further reduce water and energy consumption at 22 laundries.

The total water savings? 446 million gallons annually for 22 laundries, representing 1.3 percent of the water used by commercial laundries in the Asia Pacific region. Along the way, the participating laundries also saved 219 billion BTUs of energy. Imagine the potential impact if a much larger percentage of the region’s commercial laundries implemented these solutions.

To learn more about how Ecolab helps its customers save water, energy and cost, read our latest Corporate Sustainability Report.