Clean and green

MANILA, Philippines - It might at first seem far fetched for a retired flight attendant to take up the green advocacy in the laundry business, but not really, when you come to think how former Northwest stewardess Zarah de Jesus Juan has embraced the environment in the ever-expanding Panda cleaners, whose slogan is, aptly enough, cleaner laundry, greener earth.

In 2007 she hung up her uniform in the now since renamed Delta Airlines, and embarked on two years of intensive research to come up with the idea of a green laundromat, a spin-off from her husband’s laundry business, Lavandera Mo (not to be confused with Lavandera Ko, owned by another branch of the family).

It was during working trips to Japan where Zarah noticed people, i.e. the general citizenry, and even government, were environment conscious and they had put in place certain measures to preserve the biosphere, such as in reusable, biodegradable bags, etc. Eventually on her days off she started making and designing her own bags, upon order by friends, or as souvenirs and presents during birthdays, which developed into the Green Leaf eco bags.

Her concerns soon also included the banks of the Pasig River, where edible things are an endangered species because of the liquid solvents and wastewater constantly disgorging into the river, suffocating all versions and spawn of pusit, tahong, tilapia, bisugo.

Branch owner Theresa Enriquez with Panda Cleaners’ Zarah de Jesus Juan.

Zarah thought it was time to set up an environment friendly laundry, and maybe participate in one of the fun runs to save the Pasig organized by Gina Lopez.

Panda was born out of a shortlist of mostly animal names, that included Tarsier and Butanding, but the conscious effort really was to steer away from the usual names and practices, not anything with the word laundry in it, not any material or detergent not biodegradable or plant-based.

One of their soaps, Plantex, was invented by a Filipino, the inventor so confident of her creation that she would not mind putting a few drops in a glass of water and drinking it before amused viewers. Plantex is made out of banana bark, rich in enzymes and cleaning agents, and readily available as bananas. Under black light, foreign substances can be detected in even newly washed clothes in regular detergent, which might be a source of rashes and various allergies.

And so they brainstormed, first from out of a room in her husband’s office where Zarah set up shop initially, with her reusable bag of blues working for greener environment. They explored options, the choices available, linked up with other groups with the same or similar advocacies, like Boysen that also lessened the ill effects of after paint fumes, whose inhalation of or exposure to could lead to health problems like asthma.

Philips too provided bulbs and fluorescents that were energy saving to an exponential degree, and thus not only gave light but also the preservation of light.

Whenever Panda converts one of its franchises, the repaint-relighting process is instituted gradually, but after two years, around 50 branches have already made the green shift to being full-fledged earth saver.

PANDA-MONIUM: The Panda Cleaners mascot makes an appearance at the opening of a new branch.

They are strict with their franchisees when it comes to implementing green policy, but Zarah says the balance of cost and profit is no longer an issue – matagal na yan na-resolve – because if, for example, costs of materials went up 10 percent, sales went up 20 percent to turn in a clear profit, however modest. There’s also the old saw that traditional, commercial soaps have better cleaning properties, but constant research hopes to help bridge the gap.

She says franchisees can expect to break even in 18 months to a couple of years, if the business becomes sustainable, which means even transforming the lint byproduct into handmade paper and kacha bags by adding a little gawgaw. The Juan couple themselves invested P600,000 to start the first eco-laundry business in the country.

Panda has two quality assessment people roaming and inspecting the franchises, a regular convention of franchisees to update them, convince them that ecological consciousness in terms of setting up business is in the long run cost effective and with no room for shortcuts.

But there are the usual horror stories as any tale from the laundromat, green or otherwise, goes.

Missing unmatched socks. Stains and colors running. Designer outfit shrinking to become non-designer. Unclaimed clothes and assorted laundry. Thankfully there are the terms and conditions printed in fine print at the back of the receipt, which says if bags of laundry are unclaimed after a specified time (at most two months), they are fair game to be sorted and repacked to be sent to calamity hit areas, as Zarah observes the first thing a victim of flood or fire needs is some clean and dry clothes to regain a measure of dignity and calm. At a recent fire in Guadalupe – or was it Muntinlupa – the Panda green army was there distributing repacked stuff.

The Panda Team unloads repacked unclaimed clothes for fire victims in Guadalupe, Makati City.

Among the advantages of the green laundromat is that they don’t mix your laundry with those of others, a quite subtle statement on the respect for privacy. What if your prized shirt was mixed with a stranger’s underwear? You can always say it depends on which stranger, what underwear.

Salt and milk too help remove stains, but if a complainant insists that her Louis Vuitton was ruined, why, she has to produce a receipt that it really wasn’t Louise Vutton in the first place.

Soon new washing machines and dry cleaning equipment will be arriving from Korea, and they even have a mascot to spread the good word. But at present they don’t have a branch in Mandaluyong, the former franchisee having flown to Canada. Zarah says the city outlet might have to be company run, preferably away from the Maysilo area that turns into a cesspool during heavy downpours.

She doesn’t mind if other laundromats also take up the green advocacy, in fact so much the better, earth and biosphere will be saved and everybody happy, not only in the nearly 50 Panda cleaners branches from Tagaytay to Bulacan, or from headquarters out of Salcedo Village, Makati.

The team regularly reaches out to calamity victims.