LOCAL DRY CLEANER FINDS WETTER IS BETTER
Laura Dorf with Lucy, one of two dogs who spend their days at her environmentally safe laundry business, and below with presser Dana Holmes. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
For most of her 25-plus years in the laundry business, Laura Dorf bought into the industry gospel that cleaning clothes with a toxic solvent was the only way to go.
So heavy was the industry’s reliance on perchlortethylene, or perc, and so strong its aversion to plain old soap and water that H20 was considered a contaminant, said Dorf.
That thinking, however, has turned out to be all wet, thanks to the development of new detergents and sophisticated machinery. And Dorf, the owner of Bright Star Cleaners on the Tinton Falls side of Shrewsbury Avenue, is now running what she said is the first all- “wet” dry cleaner in the Red Bank area.
