Well, here we are folks, well into another new year already, with another old one disappeared into the past. It wasn’t the best year all told, with wars, floods, fires, but we work with what we are given.

Having started as a Saturday boy in drycleaning in 1968, I am no longer physically active in drycleaning processing, in fact I’m not physically active period as age and poor health has taken a toll.

I cannot help but recall how sometimes our industry has been castigated and pilloried by the press, TV and government. For nearly all my career the solvent of choice was Perchloroethylene. In fact, it was the staple of the industry worldwide. Perchloroethylene is Trichloroethylene (TCE) which is made fr ethylene or acetylene.

I do believe that since the unit shops became more established in the 1950s and 1970s, with their visible high street presence rather than the previous outof- sight industrial setting, was when the start of the industry becoming targeted as a result of poor practices.

Drycleaning, certainly in the UK, found itself becoming an easy target and did not have the luxury of a reply that could be heard.

There was also television consumer programmes that would often have a scoop, many of which did not deserve the term and often seemd to have been selected at random and with little research just to alarm the viewing public.

I remember one that carried out socalled scientific tests in the programme. Newly drycleaned duvets were taken straight from a Perchloroethylene machine and placed literally next to packets of butter to show how it could cause contamination of food stuffs.

Nobody from the industry had the right of reply in the programme and it was just one of many unopposed attacks against the drycleaners that grew in strength.

There was also a consumer show headed by Anne Robinson where for several weeks running they had a clothes rail called ‘Sketchleys Rail of Shame’ (Sketcheley was a major UK chain back in the day) and they featured clothing that had been the subject of complaints by customers of Sketchley.

I thought that it was was very unfair to Sketchley and many of the complaints were not even the fault of drycleaning, but incorrect care labelling, but this fallacy presumably boosted ratings. They did have the then technical director of Sketchley in on one live episode, but he was Shanghai’d and not given the opportunity to answer questions properly.

However, what I do agree with is the way cleaners and machine manufacturers have had to clean up their act and of course there are now many benign alternatives to Perchloroethylene. (See Drycleaning Developments with Renzacci’s Dr Marco Niccolini, opposite).

Solvent waste, disposal and usage must be controlled carefully. Back in the day, there were more than a few drycleaners who would put their solvent waste in general refuse without any thought to the consequences.

I have known cleaners who, when it was time to take it out, would actually open the still door while it was hot in order for the solvent sludge to slide out with less effort than to rake it out when cold.

And I have also worked in places where poor maintenance has meant that drycleaning machine door seals failed when a load was being cleaned and this would cause hot solvent spillage.

I would hope that these bad practices have now stopped. I am not a great one for legislation and busy-body government, but on balance I do think our industry needed it. My remembrance of the past is not always rose tinted!