Dry-cleaning

The attitude of clothing designers and retailers to after-care of garments remains a key issue for the EU dry-cleaning sector. For most clothes, little thought is given to how they will stand up to routine cleaning. Care labelling is haphazard at best. In a special issue of Solvents Digest, Richard Neale, founder of the Dry-cleaning Technology Centre (UK), proposes that after-care performance of garments should become an integral part of the EU clothing sector’s marketing efforts. This would help improve its competitiveness whilst addressing problems faced by the consumer and building confidence in the dry-cleaning sector. In turn, this would strengthen markets for the technically advanced, environmentally-acceptable solutions being developed by the solvents industry.