CHICAGO — While a laundry’s wash process results in clean, fresh linens, it also leaves behind dirty water, and what becomes of that water and the potential pollutants in it should be of importance not only to businesses, but their customers and the community at large. How laundries manage wastewater goes hand-in-hand with other efforts to conserve, reuse and be more environmentally conscious.
American Laundry News spoke to industry professionals representing the chemicals sector and wastewater treatment equipment manufacturing, as well as an industrial laundry operator, to get their take on the interplay between wastewater treatment and the laundry’s other processes and environmental goals, and to discuss how treatment presents benefits and challenges for those in the industry.
CHALLENGES FOR LAUNDRIES
Removing certain pollutants from water to avoid fines is especially tough for heavy industrial laundries, Randall Jones, president of Wastewater Resources, asserts, since they’re dealing with a “witches’ brew” of materials, including toxic organics.
Phil Anderson, vice president of operations at Industrial Waste Water Services, says linens used in tool-and-die operations and in printing presses are “terribly loaded” with soils.
John Schultz, senior WEW (water, energy and wastewater) solutions manager for textile care at Ecolab, says some of the trickiest soils, in terms of wastewater treatment, are what he calls “emerging pollutants”: chloroforms, chlorines and formaldehyde. These pollutants primarily affect healthcare laundries, but can also be found in laundries serving hospitality and food and beverage.
“And those laundries historically do not have wastewater treatment systems such as the DAF or the CEF and they’re like, ‘What do I do, and how do I address these issues, then?’” Schultz says.
For laundries that need to upgrade or expand their wastewater treatment systems, securing the capital and the space to do so can be an obstacle.
“I think it’s especially a challenge for small businesses,” says James Buik, president of Chicago-based uniform and textile rental company Roscoe Co. “We rely on external resources as opposed to hiring internal resources, and we can’t spread those costs over 30, 40 or 100 plants. We have to make sure that we’re compliant and we can do it on our own.”
There are also the issues that come with upkeep on such a system, which can be “substantial” and “formidable,” according to Jones.
In terms of how washroom chemistry affects wastewater treatment, Jones says it makes the process “more difficult.”
“The wash process is to get things into suspension and the treatment process is to get them out of suspension and get them into some solid form,” he says. “So they actually work in opposite directions from each other.”
And while the industry has made great strides in switching to more biodegradable detergents free of nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs), doing so has had an impact on the wastewater treatment operations at some facilities.
Schultz says the increased biodegradability of the NPE-free detergents—which allow the surfactant to degrade within an aquatic environment in, say, five days as opposed to the 30 days required for NPE-based surfactants—means facilities may see BOD and COD levels increase. This is because “the more biodegradable a product is, the higher the BOD and COD will be in the wastewater,” he says.
So although NPE-free detergents are “green” chemicals, Schultz adds, POTW consider them “higher pollutant-loading” products.
Anderson says he always advises laundries to have a wastewater treatment vendor come observe the system anytime new washroom chemistry is undergoing trials, to be sure the chemical is treatable before any contracts are signed. And for laundries interested in reusing water, Schultz warns that doing so can ultimately push up concentrations of pollutants in the water.
“So, for example, if you have a discharge limitation of 100 [milligrams per liter] for oils and greases, and the laundry goes ahead and has a 20% water reduction, their concentration going out the back door is now 120 [milligrams per liter],” he says.
BENEFITS FOR BUSINESSES
Besides keeping pollutants out of waterways and protecting the environment, wastewater treatment can have a number of benefits for businesses.
In addition to avoiding fines and creating the possibility for reusing water in a facility’s processes, there is also the opportunity to use the treatment as a “marketing tool,” Anderson says.
Buik says a major benefit for Roscoe is simply the ability to operate in Chicago, a “strict market in terms of wastewater enforcement.” But, he adds, it’s also just “the right thing to do.”
“Our customers are very interested in making sure that their soil byproducts are safely taken care of, because they do have a cradle-to-grave responsibility, and even though they … entrust us with their soil waste stream, it’s still their responsibility,” he says.
Another benefit, Schultz says, is that laundries can apply for an evaporation credit from their POTW for water evaporated in the wash process.
“When clothes come out of a washer, they hold moisture, and that [eventually] goes up the vent stack, so why pay for something that doesn’t go back to the sewer?” he says.
However, operators should approach their POTW about getting the credit before installing the necessary equipment to measure and record the actual amount of water leaving the facility, Schultz advises.
FUTURE OF WATER FOR THE INDUSTRY
Since water is so integral to a plant’s processes, considering the future of this resource is not a futile task.
Schultz says equipment manufacturers, chemical vendors and other product vendors are all working on ways to help laundries decrease their water usage.
And as for the POTW, even they have ideas for how to conserve and reuse water. Schultz says POTW have begun to approach laundries about using the municipality’s greywater, or non-potable water, in some laundering processes, especially during portions of the wash cycle where fresh water is not necessarily needed.
“But this may mean the laundry will have to install potentially a third infrastructure—a third set of valves, a third set of piping—that will handle the greywater into the facility,” he adds.
Shortages of water are already becoming a major problem for some laundries, Anderson says, and not just the ones in areas prone to drought. Restrictions on water usage per day are already a reality for some plants. Reusing water, he says, can help combat this.
“When you can reuse part of your water, you’re not limiting your production based on what water you’re allowed to have,” he says. “[The issue is], how clean can I make this water where I can reuse portions of it to keep production where I’m at, or actually increase production?”
Jones sees the availability of water as “a major, major problem” in the next 10 years, and he believes treatment standards will continue to become more stringent.
“I would say it would be close to impossible to build a new, major commercial laundry in Southern California,” he says. “I don’t know where you would find a municipality that would sell you that much water.”
As for the laundry/linen industry, it is continuing to find ways to be more efficient in water usage and to be more conscious of the industry’s effect on the environment.
Buik says it’s important to remember the positive impact of the industry, and to be confident in laundries’ green contributions.
“And I would assert that if our industry didn’t exist, people would use an abundance of water, [and] they wouldn’t be able to get things as clean. They would probably use a lot of disposables and create a lot of waste in landfills and what not,” he says. “And we can show improvements in water use, in energy use, [and] in chemical use, and we have done that. And that’s been a real success story for the EPA and for our industry as well.”
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