Shirtland Drycleaners

Print This Page

Drycleaner scores on efficiency, environment, growth

Nina Winham
For bchydro.com

When two young entrepreneurs took over a 50-year-old drycleaning business in Vancouver, they put their skills and their values to work. The results have been impressive – and they prove the benefits of thinking strategically about energy and the environment.

Husband and wife team Talib and Julie Jiwani purchased Shirtland Drycleaners from Talib's parents three years ago. Located in Vancouver's eastside on a popular commuter route, they started to shift it towards retail service after years as a commercial laundry (handling shirt orders for other cleaners across the city).

"We went over it top to bottom to look at what we could do that would be environmentally friendly and reduce our energy bills," says Talib. "My background is in production optimization for a pulp and paper company, so when I came in here I was trying to optimize production using the latest technology."

The couple replaced an aging boiler with two high efficiency gas fired boilers and ensured steam and hot water pipes are well insulated. A heat recovery system captures waste heat. This allows the business to clean the equivalent of 100 loads of home laundry with little or no additional energy to heat the water, replacing an electric water heater previously used to do the job.

The dry-cleaning equipment uses non-toxic, biodegradable solvent, and new washers for wet cleaning use significantly less water than the older models. The Jiwanis installed an automatic bagging machine for bagging customers' laundry which saves six pounds of plastic per day – and they switched to biodegradable plastic, absorbing the higher cost.

"We use so much plastic, maybe 35 or 40 pounds a day, and the idea that that was non-biodegradable landfill matter bothered us. So we started using a biodegradable product instead," says Talib.

"We started doing this [going green] before it was as popular as it is now," he continues. "At some point you have to replace your equipment anyways, so instead of waiting until it needed replacement, we thought why not move to the latest technology and do a good thing by going green. The switch did cost us a lot of money and the process slowed us down a little, but over time we were able to make it cost-neutral."

Brighter space & energy savings

The couple also worked to brighten up the business space. They upgraded older T12 fluorescent tubes to more efficient T8 tubes. Spot lights in the front of the store and changing rooms were switched to specialty compact fluorescent lamps. One of the best improvements in lighting didn't come from light bulbs, however. They painted the whole place – walls, ceiling and floor – in light colours.

"We painted them "triple white" – it's a really white, white, white," Talib chuckles. "For both energy reasons and for quality control, we wanted the place to be as bright as possible, for spotting stains and also for employees because some areas of the plant don't have daylight." He says the choice of paint alone has certainly helped save on energy bills. "It meant we didn't need to add a lot of new fixtures. It really brightened up the place; it's night and day."

Shirtland continues to test new ideas, such as a reusable laundry bag that will convert to a suit bag, eliminating the need for plastic wrapping. It supports a variety of charitable causes in the community. And the Jiwanis' strategic investments are clearly paying off.

"It's hard to say how much we've saved on energy bills because we've been growing," says Talib. "Our volume over the last two years is up 32% and most of the bills should go up in scale with volume – but we haven't seen much increase at all."

"This made sense financially for the long term," he says. "We're both in our 30s, so we said, ‘let's put something into the business where we're going to reap the benefits over the future. On top of that it will save us money. Every change we made we had the environment as well as energy in mind."

Businesses implementing energy-saving technologies and programs often qualify for BC Hydro incentives through the Product Incentive Program. You can also contact the Power Smart Business Helpdesk by email or at 604 522 4713 in the Lower Mainland or toll-free 1 866 522 4713 elsewhere in the province.