Help Local Dry Cleaners Reduce Plastic
With scientists predicting that there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050, it’s clear that we need to turn off the plastic tap. And your local dry cleaner is a great place to start. A midsized dry cleaner typically uses about 25 rolls of polybag plastic per month and all of this nonrecyclable film plastic can be replaced with reusable garment bags. Better yet, making this switch will actually SAVE the business owner money, even if they cover the cost of providing reusable bags to their customers.
In The Bag: A Guide For Dry Cleaners To Move Beyond Plastic offers practical advice, tools, and resources to help dry cleaning businesses interested in reducing plastic take meaningful steps to do so, AND to let their customers, potential customers, reporters, and others know about their planet-friendly changes.
But they may not hear about the guide unless you get involved. YOU can share these resources and information with the staff and owners of dry cleaning businesses in your neighborhood, town, or city to help them begin their journey away from single-use plastic and towards reuse. Check out the organizing resources below to get started.
GUIDE: IN THE BAG
In The Bag: A Guide For Dry Cleaners To Move Beyond Plastic offers practical advice, tools, and resources to help dry cleaning businesses interested in reducing plastic take meaningful steps to do so, AND to let their customers, potential customers, reporters, and others know about their planet-friendly changes.
Download the web-resolution version of the guide (4.06 MB PDF)
Download the print-resolution version of the guide (11.4 MB PDF)
The guide is also available in Spanish. Haga clic aquí para descargar en Español. (1.57 MB PDF)
If you have any questions about the guide, please contact Beyond Plastics policy director and guide author Megan Wolff at meganwolff2@bennington.edu. If you need any other materials to share the guide, please contact Beyond Plastics digital director Eve Fox at evefox@bennington.edu.
EASY-TO-PRINT ONE-PAGE HANDOUT
We realize that the guide is rather long :) If you’re interested in spreading the word about the guide in person, you can print out our simple one-page handout to leave with dry cleaning staff and owners in your community after you speak with them.
We’ve designed it to be easy to print in black and white and it includes a QR code to make it easy for staff to scan it to get to the guide as well as a shortened URL they can type in to reach it.
SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLKIT
Social media can be a powerful tool to help gather supporters and also to let restaurant owners and managers know this is an important issue that they should prioritize.
We’ve put together sample content you can share on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram as well as a sample email and some ready-to-use graphics to help illustrate this effort.