| LAUNDRYESP UPDATE
CONSERVATION PROGRAM GETS READY
TO RELEASE RESULTS
By Petra Lattmann
For the last four years, LaundryESP, an environmental stewardship program
run jointly by Uniform & Textile Service Association (UTSA) and
Textile Rental Services Association of America (TRSA,) has asked members
to voluntarily reduce water and energy consumption in their laundry
plants by ten to twenty percent, increase the use of environmentally
friendly wash chemicals by the same amount, and reduce the discharge
of pollutants to sewer systems.
The overall results of this industry-wide effort will be announced
to the leadership of the two trade associations during a planned mid-October
meeting and then revealed to the general public in the first quarter
of 2004.
In order to prove that LaundryESP's objectives were met, the program
conducted four surveys to collect supporting data. Program participants,
representing 75 percent of the overall laundry production in the industry,
helped create a baseline by digging back in their records to establish
usage in 1997 and 1998, and in the same survey, reported their 1999
efforts to attain the four objectives.
"I've done some preliminary analysis on the '97-'99 data that
showed we were making good progress towards the goals, said David Dunlap,
environmental affairs & information technology director for UTSA.
"We had about a five to six percent reduction in the water and
energy use in just those three years."
With the 2002 survey collection just completed, Dunlap and his team
will first conduct a quality control assurance procedure that will check
for anomalies in the data. This scrutiny will ensure that data entry
mistakes or obvious miscalculations are rectified before an estimated
one month analysis effort of all six concurrent years of data (1997-2002)
begins sometime in September.
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| "The primary goal has been to
show how environmentally sensitive and friendly the laundry industry
can actually be, and that it benefits everybody, whether they
were an actual participant in the LaundryESP program or not,"
said Dunlap. "We raised the bar by setting ambitious, voluntary
environmental conversation goals for our industry."
Dunlap added that while the program's funding came from the operating
budget of both UTSA and TRSA, the participating companies spent
their own time and resources to collect the yearly data. Overall,
90 percent of the required surveys were submitted, an excellent
return rate given the voluntary nature of LaundryESP.
The benefits of this program to the participating companies are
threefold. First, it provided an incentive to internally measure
energy and water consumption rates per laundry room pound, helping
companies benchmark and then explore methods of improving their
process. At the same time, these companies were reviewing the
types of chemicals they used and discovering better ways to control
the amount of pollutant discharge. By volunteering their confidential
information to a third party (LaundryESP), the submitted data
also gains increased validity.
Second, when the industry-wide results are available, these companies
will be able to compare their own gains in operating efficiency
and environmental stewardship to an industry average, and use
the information to demonstrate their leadership role in environmental
concerns to current and prospective customers.
Last, but not least, the companies will be publicly recognized
for their efforts in Q1 2004, when UTSA and TRSA hold a general
press conference in Washington, D.C., including possible participation
by government dignitaries, to announce the comprehensive impact
of the LaundryESP program.
"I think that we are going to have some excellent results
and the best thing for the laundry industry is to continue the
ESP program," said Dunlap.
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