Eco Friendly Dry Cleaning Bag! Green Garmento!

Photo courtesy of Green Garmento.

Dry cleaning can help keep that cashmere sweater in tact, not shrink your favorite jeans, help colors stay bright, and get out that greasy stain on your silk blouse from last night's dinner.  Yes, some clothes require us to have them dry cleaned, while others of us just don't like to do laundry.  So the dry cleaner is like your best friend.  Yes, we all have been to the dry cleaner and some more regularly than others.  Do you ever stop to really look at how much plastic dry cleaner's use?  A LOT!  More than you can probably imagine!  Think of how many dry cleaner's there are in your area, in your city,in your state, and in the country!  That's billions of plastic bags being used once around each garment we dry clean.  Seems like a big-ole waste to me.

Are these plastic bags really necessary and at what point do people decide that sheer convenience is not worth the environmental impact? Many have begun to carry cloth bags with them when they go grocery shopping, but not enough people have looked to their dry cleaner. Not only are those giant strips of plastic a suffocation risk for children and animals, but most people only use their bags to take the clothes home and then toss them out.


It is estimated that one dry cleaner uses more than 100,000 plastic bags per year!  I don't even think my brain can wrap around that number if you multiply that by every dry cleaner.  Insane!!

Photo courtesy of Green Garmento.

So...what can you do?  Bring your own garment bag!  Plain and simple.  Actually, my dry cleaner sells a garment bag called the Green Garmento. I had never heard of this before and one day when I walked in, voila!...there it was...in all it's lime green glory!  I wish I had thought of this!!!  This bag is not only a garment bag, but can serve as a laundry bag, and duffel.  They even have an official "GTL" bag you can get and be like "The Situation" from MTV's Jersey Shore.  And the price couldn't be more affordable at less than $10 (my dry cleaner sells two for $10).

In the end, it takes a tad more effort because the dry cleaner will actually have to match up the bag to the clothes and their customers will have to remember to bring the bag.  But this little extra effort can do a lot for our world!