recycleBryan/College Station, Texas: According to the Drycleaning and Laundry Institute, the leading industry association, 1.4 billion pieces of clothing and other items are professionally cleaned in the United States each year. If you figure that most cleaners wrap no more than an average of three pieces in a bag, that’s at least 466 million bags a year, or over 86 million pounds of plastic gathering dust in the back of our closets or chocking our landfills. Today’s environmentally-minded dry cleaners are participating in the recently announced Poly Recycling Program from FabriClean Supply, one of the largest providers of supplies to dry cleaning and laundry operations in the United States.

Pride Cleaners of Bryan and College Station, Texas has signed up for the program, and has placed a collection box in both their locations in which customers can deposit poly bags. The bags will be collected from Pride Cleaners on a regular basis by FabriClean Supply’s drivers. FabriClean Supply will put all those bags in the hands of companies that will recycle them into fencing, children’s outdoor toy sets, soft drink crates and other plastic products.

Will and Heather Simmen, owner of Pride Cleaners, said, “Poly bags take up space in landfills. Recycling plastic bags and turning them into other plastic products simply makes good sense. It is good for the environment and reduces our dependence upon foreign oil.

According to Will and Heather, every ton of garment film FabriClean collects will save the equivalent of 17 trees; 380 gallons of oil; 7,000 gallons of water; 4,100 kilowatt hours of electricity or 89 cubic feet of landfill.

FabriClean Supply delivers about 15 truckloads of plastic products to its customers every month. Will and Heather said, “If even half of that amount is reclaimed and recycled, it will have a very positive environmental impact.”

Terry Stanton, Vice President of Sales for FabriClean Supply said, “Over two years ago, FabriClean Supply made the long-term commitment to assume a leadership role in the “greening” of the dry cleaning and laundry industry. We looked at operations in all ten of our warehouses for “green” opportunities. We contacted many of our 400 vendor-partners in the effort to drive the development of eco-friendly products for us to promote to our industry.”

Anyone in the Bryan/College Station area wishing to dispose of polyethylene garment bags is welcome to drop them off into the collection box at both locations of Pride Cleaners. The company offers quality dry cleaning and laundry services.