With Earth Hour upon us, this Saturday 24 March, it’s a great time to consider how your laundry operations can reduce its environmental footprint and decrease its utility bills.
For hotel and aged care facilities, there is an obvious place to start when looking to save money on utility bills: the in-house laundry! The average laundry in hotels and aged care facilities consumes more than 1/3 of all water and electricity used onsite.
Here are some tips to ensure that your laundry is operating efficiently:
- The number one cause of poor laundry efficiency is washer under-loading. Where possible, always wash full loads. Full loads result in less washer cycles, and less cycles result in valuable water and electricity savings.
- Sort linens into their different classifications and use the correct wash cycle for each type of textile. If linens are not sorted, laundry operators will need to use the “heavy” cycle for every wash, resulting in unnecessarily excessive utility consumption. Sorting linens will allow you to use the shortest wash cycle for each textile type, to deliver great results. It will also minimise soil transfer between textile types, which means that less rewashing will be required.
- Another benefit to sorting and washing like-for-like linens is that the load can be dried on the correct drying cycle and over-drying can be minimised. If the load is mixed, laundry operators will need to select the longest drying cycle to ensure that everything is dry, resulting in – you guessed it – excessive utility consumption.
- Where possible, wash your towels and sheets in a high-speed washer. This will extract more water from your linens during washing and, in turn, reduce drying times. High speed variants, also known as soft-mount washers, refer to the high extract speed (not the cycle length), and will remove more water than a solid mount machine.
- Clean the lint filter of your dryer after every 2-3 loads. This process can be as simple as dislodging lint from the filter screen so that the dryer can breathe. Cleaning the lint filter will increase airflow, which results in faster drying times and reduces overall utility consumption.
- Fold sheets, pillowslips and napkins straight from the dryer, while they are still warm. This will negate the use of an ironing press, and further unnecessary electricity use.
- When upgrading laundry machinery, always ask your supplier to calculate the right size replacement machine. Sometimes the size of your current machine may not be the most suitable for your laundry needs. Correctly sizing your machines will aid in efficiency and, ultimately, save you money.
Your commercial laundry experts
You can rely on Aqualogic to get the best wash results in your laundry. This will help ensure that your water and energy consumption is not an unnecessary expense to your business or our planet. We are experts in the set up and maintenance of commercial laundries, and we can help you to determine what options are best for you. For more information on our comprehensive range of equipment and services, contact us online today or call 1300 222 119.
To get involved with Earth Hour, the worlds largest grassroots movement for the environment, please click here.