20 Years of Doing the RIGHT Thing

When I graduated in the 1990s, I never thought I’d have been working in the dry cleaning industry for nearly 15 years. And those years have been really interesting, full of so many journeys, both literally and figuratively.

My GreenEarth journey started with Johnson Cleaners, the largest GreenEarth Affiliate. At that point in 2005, 75 percent of their stores were operating using perc. The initial trial using GreenEarth had just been completed in all the Scottish (UK) branches. And the rest, as they say, is history!

Johnsons always saw GreenEarth Cleaning as the solution to suit them, knowing some of the legislative changes that were underway and the size of their retail estate. Sure, there were some changes for the branch teams to get used to, but as time went on and a better understanding of the product range took hold, GreenEarth soon became part of the Johnsons core proposition.

During my 10 years at Johnsons, I saw the conversion of 100 percent of their machines to GreenEarth, the rebranding from blue to green to reflect the full adoption of GreenEarth, plus a number of sustainability awards.

Fast forward to 2015 when I joined GreenEarth as Sustainability Director—a varied role that has allowed me to see the other side of the coin. Over the years, I have developed strong relationships with the team. And like the solution, they care for people, the planet, and the clothes that people wear—truly living the brand!

The main part of my role has been dealing with retailers and manufacturers who have a strong presence in Europe but who have a global customer base. More and more are recommending GreenEarth on their care labels and also starting to communicate GreenEarth benefits on packaging, in-store marketing, as well as colleague and customer communication.

And the reason is, they carry out testing to examine the performance levels of their garments in GreenEarth versus other cleaning methods, and the results speak for themselves. This gives them the confidence that their customers will be happy with their product and our product, leading to stronger commercial performance.

Sometimes, you can pick the CORRECT thing to do or you can pick the RIGHT thing to do; with GreenEarth, retailers and manufacturers do both.

I look forward to many years of achievement to come for GreenEarth

and its wider family of Affiliates.

By: Garry Knox