RICHMOND, Ky. — The goal of every laundry and linen service is to provide clean, quality linens for its customers.
“It doesn’t matter who you wash your linen for, whether it be healthcare or hospitality, you want your customers and your clients to be sleeping on some high-quality goods, both aesthetically as well as antimicrobial,” says Doug Story, owner of MorgenBrooke, a laundry consultancy in Sylva, North Carolina. He has more than 35 years of experience working with industrial and institutional laundries.
During the recent Association for Linen Management (ALM) webinar “Clean Textiles, Healthy Environments: A Discussion on Antimicrobial Process for Reusable Textiles,” Story provided a high-level look at the laundering process.
He went into detail about the process of producing hygienically clean goods, including the traditional time, temperature, mechanical action and chemicals wash pie.
But what about after? Everything’s been done. The laundry has followed procedures in the plant. How does the service get the processed items to the customers while maintaining cleanliness?
SEPARATING SOIL AND CLEAN
“It starts at the beginning, at the soil sort,” Story says. “You have all of these goods coming in the soil sort, and you’re bringing all kinds of germs and bugs into your plant. How do you keep the germs and bugs in your plant from contaminating the goods that you just processed? There are several ways to do that.
“It’s how you handle the goods, how your personnel handle them. On the truck, the truck drivers have spill kits and PPE, personal protection equipment, that clean the trucks after use, and then they document these housekeeping products. You have to have good housekeeping procedures on the soil side as much as on the clean side.”
So, what can operators do to help ensure any “germs and bugs” from the soil side do not get to the clean side?
“First, you wouldn’t want your air flowing from the soil side of your plant over to your clean side,” Story points out. “In the plant, you want your clean-side air to flow over to your soil side to prevent contamination of bugs that might be in the air when coming from the soil side of your plant.”
Another component, he shares, is something called functional separation. Many plants have different ways of doing this.
“Some plants build walls,” says Story. “There is a soil-side wall, and there’s a door. Between that door on one side is the clean side and on the other side is the soil side. That door remains closed, and the air is flowing right into your face because if you go through there, the clean side is on the other side of that door.
“There’s usually a transition area where you can take off your PPE, your personal protection, and you make sure it gets disposed of before you go to the clean side.”
Another functional separation is in place with the laundry carts.
“You’ve got these carts, and you cover them with plastic,” Story says. “You’ve washed all these goods. It’s set and ready to be shipped out to the customer. It’s functionally separated from the outside environment because you’ve wrapped the goods inside there and you’ve covered that cart with plastic. And on the clean side, you’ve got drapes that separate the clean side of the plant from the soil side of the plant.
“Again, having that functional separation is an important component to your plant.”
CLEAN EQUIPMENT, PLANT, TRUCKS
Story says that another key to maintaining hygienically clean goods is preventative maintenance in the form of cleaning.
“Preventative maintenance on your equipment includes janitorial; you clean your equipment,” he shares. “You make sure it’s functioning mechanically. It’s clean.
“There’s sanitizing on hand to keep the linens clean. Some washers dump onto a conveyor belt. Before they dump the goods on that conveyor belt, an employee actually sprays that belt down with sanitizer and make sure that it’s good and clean before those goods even go into the dryer.
“The goods are being prepared so that when they get to the clean side, they’re hygienically clean as well as aesthetically clean.”
Story stresses that laundry operators must make sure that clean areas are truly clean.
“You’ve got people cleaning things and making sure that sanitizers are used and carts are clean,” he points out. “It’s important to have cleaning stations where you’ve got hand sanitizer. You’ve got cleaning agents.
“An employee can use the sanitizer to spray the carts down with to make sure they’re sanitized after they’ve been run through the cart washer. They use that same sanitizer to wipe down the folding tables and the cleaning tables at the clean stations within the plant.
“Janitorial, keeping the place clean, is probably one of the most valuable ways or most effective ways to keep your good, clean linen that you just processed through your washer from becoming stained or unsanitary for its shipment to the customers.
“You’ve got cleaning supply dilution stations, chemical cleaning storage, and then, of course, you’ve got that the cleaning equipment necessary for the folks to use so that they can clean the place when they need to.”
DELIVERY
After processing, the goods are shipped to the customers, and it’s important to maintain cleanliness when preparing and shipping the goods.
“When you start shipping these goods, you notice there are all kinds of different ways of covering things,” shares Story. “They’ve got color-coded stuff for HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points) for goods to be used in food service operations, places where our food is processed. You’ve got tabletops that are wrapped in plastic and then bar towels wrapped in plastic that are used in restaurants.
“On the truck, you’ve got a clean side and then you have a soil side, and everything is either wrapped in plastic or covered. The soil side is covered in bags, and they’re separated. And then again, clean goods in a cart wrapped and covered in plastic, functionally separated from the potential of becoming contaminated after you’ve already processed them in your washing process.”
VERIFICATION
Once a laundry has a process, then it has to be verified, says Story.
“Microbial testing—there’s a company here called Accugen that you can actually send your goods off and have them tested to make sure they’re microbially cleaned, and that’s not a bad deal,” he shares.
“You can run those tests, and then when you start talking to your customers, you can show them that you’re doing quarterly tests on your goods to make sure that, from random selections, you are getting good, hygienically clean linens ready for that customer to use.”
Another verification method involves a swab test.
“You can swab the area, and those swabs show immediate results. Those things, you put it down there, you swab it, it turns blue, and you know that’s microbially contaminated. Those are some good things you can do.”
CONCLUSION
“Hygienically clean doesn’t mean you’re totally eliminating all microbials,” Story points out. “It just means that the microbials are down at such a low concentration that they’re almost undetectable, or they can’t launch a major assault on somebody’s immune system.”
He adds that the laundry process has always been a process that, when properly implemented, will provide hygienically clean goods.
“Following procedures post-wash and pre-wash are an important part of delivering the kind of goods our customers need: clean to the eye and clean at the microbial level,” Story says.
“Again, follow good processes in your wash cycle, and then after the goods are washed. Make sure your plant is clean, that you have functional separation in your plant to keep the clean stuff separated from the soiled stuff.
“Also, the clean stuff has to be separated from your employees as best as you possibly can by wearing PPE, covering the stuff, wrapping it in plastic, and then protecting it from the environment as it’s being shipped to your customers.”
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].
