Evanston just got a little greener.
A revolutionary dry cleaning process called Solvair can clean stains of any sort while remaining environmentally friendly. And Evanston’s Lake City Cleaners, 831 Emerson St., is the first in the world to use the new technology, according to the store’s owner.
Developed by R.R. Street & Co., Solvair cleans clothes without the use of heat. That way, even fragile or stained clothes can be washed, said Ross Bear, company president and CEO. Solvair is environmentally safe, emission-free and uses a nonhazardous solvent, Beard said.
Lake City Cleaners has been used Solvair for about a month and a half, owner Victor Seyedin said.
“We were very surprised at the quality of the garments coming out of the machine after a demo from the company,” Seyedin said. “I turned around and asked the owner of the company for the machine when it came out. Now we’re the first in the world to be using it.”
Buying a Solvair machine is monetary equivalent of buying three conventional machines, said Seyedin, adding that the price difference is worth it.
“It allows us to do things that we can’t do with other machines,” Seyedin said. “More fragile garments can be cleaned, and I believe it cleans more than 90 percent better than anything else.”
According to Beard, Solvair has been in development for about 10 years. Instead of using heat to dry clothes – which can cause shrinkage – Solvair dries using liquid carbon dioxide.
With normal dry cleaning, it could take several hours for clothes to dry. With Solvair, clothes dry in about two-and-a-half minutes .
Since Solvair doesn’t dry using heat, stains stand no chance of staying set on clothes. And unlike other methods of washing, all types of clothing can be cleaned in the same load.
“For someone at home,” Beard said, “you would never take something like a white down coat and wash it with a red silk blouse. You run the risk of the red bleeding onto the coat. You can clean everything together with Solvair.”
Customers interested in having clothes cleaned with Solvair at Lake City Cleaners can expect to pay about a dollar more than using a conventional dry cleaning system.
R.R. Street and Co. is expecting to have about a dozen more Solvair machines installed in dry cleaners by the end of the year. Prospective locations include New York, New Jersey and California, Beard said.
“I think it’s going to ultimately replace quite a lot of the technologies used today, ” Beard said. “Right now it’s designed for the upper end of the market. As the years go on we expect a very large number of places to use it. It’s been very enthusiastically received so far.”
Some Northwestern students said they were excited about the idea of a new way to clean dirty clothes.
Erin Royals, a Weinberg sophomore, said she had to throw away a T-shirt last year after a stubborn grease stain wouldn’t come out.
“I wasn’t too upset about it,” said Royals, adding that Solvair sounded like a good alternative.
“I had gotten it at an outlet store and it wasn’t that expensive,” she said. “But I would have wanted to be able to keep it.”
Reach Renee Lee at [email protected].
