Organic Carpet Cleaning NYC

Nearly everybody has a carpet in his house, and virtually every workplace in the United States has a floor covered by a fitted carpet. But, most of all, everybody knows how difficult can be to maintain clean a carpet. Carpets are like sponges, and restrain all kinds of dirt, from pet fur to food residues, to dust and drinks droplets. Soiling particles con form really persistent bonds with the surface of carpet fibers, resulting really difficult to remove with just water and soap. Moreover carpets are like filters that collect powder, odors and pollutants from the surrounding environment, keeping them in the fibers network and releasing them in long times. A dirty carpet, beside being smelly and unpleasant, can favor mites and bacteria proliferation and worsen the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) of our house or workplace. For this reason it is important to regularly clean it to avoid bad odors, dirt or, worse, health problems.

Cleaning a carpet can be a quite complex operation, and if you do not know how to do it the risk of  damaging it, burn yourself with chemical detergent or inhale toxic vapors during the cleaning operation could be considerably high. Because of this, it is important to rely on specialized cleaners who know how to do a good work in complete security.

Just typing “Carpet cleaning in NYC” on Google, it is possible to see more than twenty different cleaning services, which use different kinds of methods to clean carpets. Not all cleaning processes are the same: some are more effective and some others are less. But, most of all, some cleaning methods (especially the older ones) are not risk free for the environment and for the health of the final users.

So, to wisely choose the best carpet cleaning service, first of all it is necessary to deepen knowledge on the carpet cleaning methods.

How a carpet is cleaned

There are several methods to efficiently clean a carpet: some are harder while other are softer; some are really eco-friendly while other implies the use of highly polluting materials. But mainly it is possible to divide carpet cleaning methods in wet and dry methods.

• Wet methods: Hot Water Extraction (HWE)

Is the main wet carpet cleaning method and the older one. Several cleaners still use HWE, which implies the use of hot water and detergents. The hot water-detergent mixture is sprayed at high pressure on the carpet, extracting the soiling particles from the fibers network. The mixture is then removed under vacuum.

Besides hot vapor and detergents, the HWE often implies the use of alkaline or acid solutions as pre-treatment to regulate the pH and weaken the bond between the soiling and the fibers.

The first disadvantage of this method is to take several hours for drying, making it impossible to access to the room or event to an entire building (in the case of fitted carpets). Secondly in the long run the HWE can ruin the carpet fibers, especially in case of handmade carpets.  In addition, many of the detergents and of the reagents used for the pre-treatment can be quite polluting or toxic, since they are not biodegradable, environmentally persistent and with not physiologic pH.

• Dry cleaning

Nowadays dry-cleaning or “very low moisture” systems are the most used, because of the lower drying times and the lower stress for the carpet fibers. The dry cleaning reagents can be further divided in

• Organic solvents: normally they are petroleum based solvents with a low boiling temperature and a high solvent power.
• Solid powders: they are solid powders capable of surround soiling particles and separate them from the carpet fibers.

The environmental factor

As we have seen in the previous paragraphs, there are two main families of carpet cleaning methods. Both of them can be really effective in eliminating soiling from carpets, but both imply severe problems related to the impact on the environment and on the human health. Environmental problems are mainly related to two class of substances:

Detergents

Detergents are one of the main problems of carpet cleaning: they alter the pH of water, cause abnormal growth of seaweeds, can cause allergic reactions in humans and can be quite toxic for humans and aquatic fauna. Moreover, a lot of detergents are poorly biodegradable

Despite their toxicity has been well known since many years, and despite nowadays there are greener detergents available, many carpet cleaners still continua to use “old generation” detergents.

VOCs

The very low moisture treatments often implies the use of a pre-treatment with detergents or organic compounds, usually petroleum based or fluorinated compounds, with low evaporation temperatures (the typical “dry cleaning smell” is given by these compounds). These compounds take the name of VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds), and their use must be avoided for two good reasons:

• Ecological reasons: many VOCs are known as pollutants. They can be easily dispersed in the environment, they are really environmentally persistent, they are often discharged in wastewater (more than six different VOCs were found in the surface and ground water of the Hudson basin, sometimes over the legal limits) and in the atmosphere and they contribute to the greenhouse effect and damage the ozone layer.
• Moreover, the production of these organic compounds starts from non-renewable resources, it is often little eco-friendly and implies high energy consumption.
• Health reasons: many VOCs are dangerous for human health, and can cause eye or throat irritations, allergies or even asthma attacks. Some VOCs are known to be carcinogenic, some others are suspected to be. Despite their volatility, some VOCs can be adsorbed in the carpet fibers during the cleaning operation and be released during the day to follow. A rug saturated with VOCs can have smell of organic solvents for several days and represents a problem for the IAQ of a house or a workplace, especially for environments with a low air supply.

Despite the environmental impact of organic compound and VOCs, like the use of detergents also their use is still diffused in lots of “old school” carpet dry cleaning services, that represents a danger for environment and human health.

Green is good

In the last years, both governments and firms have started to pay more attention to the ecological and environmental aspects of the cleaning processes. The regulations on the use of not biodegradable detergents are becoming more stringent all over the world. At the same time, customers have become more demanding on the ecologic sustainability of the cleaning processes.

For this reason in the last years the attention has been focused on green technologies and green chemistry in several fields, and carpet dry cleaning does not represent an exception. In facts, in the last fifteen years new products and processes have been developed to avoid the use of VOCs and not biodegradable detergent or pre-treatment agents in carpet dry cleaning.  So, while old style cleaners still persist in using organic solvents and detergents, more innovative professionals in NYC and in the rest of USA are switching to more biodegradable and eco-friendly compounds.

Green dry cleaning presents in fact several advantages compared to traditional dry cleaning techniques:

• Ecological compounds: compounds used for green dry cleaning are eco-friendly, biodegradable, non toxic and biocompatible, with a really low impact on human health. In some cases they are also obtained from totally green raw materials.
• Non volatile or smelling compounds: green compounds are less volatile than traditional solvents for dry cleaning and have less persistent odor, so they do not worsen the Internal Air Quality of the workplace.
• Physiologic pH reagents: the use of green reagents with a physiologic pH limits the risks of irritation and decreases the wastewater pollution.

If used professionally, green products for dry cleaning can be more effective than old methods; so nowadays the best dry cleaners professionals are using them to do their job in an eco-friendly way.

Hydrogen peroxide based products: the bomb

An approach for the green dry cleaning of carpet is the use of alkali based mixture with hydrogen peroxide, used in form of a dry powder. Hydrogen peroxide is one of the most powerful oxidizing agents, it strongly oxidizes the organic compounds which constitute the dirt, destroying their bond with the carpet fibers and removing them from the fibers network. After some minutes of action, the powder is vacuumed away, avoiding the risk of re-soiling of the carpet. Nevertheless, hydrogen peroxide based mixture have a highly basic pH, which implies two fundamental issues:

• They are highly soluble in water, so they can alter the pH of waterways. This makes them not totally green products.
• They are highly caustic, so they represent a danger for human health if not handled with care.

D-Limonene: help from nature

D-Limonene is an ecological aliphatic compound belonging to the monotepenes class. It is a viscous pale yellow liquid, similar to vegetable oil and not miscible with water. It is completely biodegradable and it can be obtained by fully renewable sources. Despite it can sometimes cause irritation or allergic reactions it is considered highly biocompatible and substantially safe for human health.

D-Limonene is widely employed for oil spots cleaning, and can be successfully used as a detergent for carpet cleaning. It is sprayed on the carpet, leaving it to dwell some minutes and then removing it by a hot water extraction machines.

Encapsulation: a cage for soiling

Maybe the newest technique for carpet green dry cleaning on the market nowadays is the encapsulation technique. Developed in late 1990s, it consists in the use of special polymers, totally biodegradable and eco-friendly. The solid powder is sprayed directly on the spots on the carpet and left to act for some minutes. The polymer molecules surround the dirt droplets breaking their bonds to the carpet fibers.  This process creates fine and small solid particles that can be easily vacuumed away from the carpet by blowing high pressure air on it without the need of drying. Encapsulation processes are very effective for carpet cleaning and at the same time have a really low environmental impact, but have also a potential health issue. Fine powders can be breathed causing respiratory problems.

Supercritical fluids (SCF): a look to the future

Despite they still are not a widely used method, supercritical fluids represent the future of green dry cleaning technologies. Several chemical plants nowadays use supercritical water  (H2O sc) or supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2 sc) for cleaning or extraction processes. These two compounds are fluid like vapor but have a solvent power higher than that of a lot of liquids, and offer a wide range of opportunity

• they easily and quickly dissolve nearly every kind of soiling (both organic and inorganic).
• they can be obtained at mild conditions, with a low energy consumption.
• they are totally green, not toxic and with negligible environmental impact.

In the SCF treatment, the carpet are treated with supercritical fluid at low pressures and temperatures. The SFC solubilizes soiling particles, and then is vacuumed away from the carpet. Despite it still is not a commercial method, it offer great future perspectives!

Professionalism is everything

We have seen that it is really important to regularly clean a carpet, to avoid bacterial proliferation or a worsening of Internal Air Quality. At the same time we have seen what kind of risks is hidden in the older carpet cleaning methods, and how important is to use highly eco-friendly and biodegradable compounds for both environmental and health reasons.

Biodegradable and biocompatible solvents and detergents can be very effective if used professionally, they respect the environment and minimize (but do not completely cancel) the risks for human health. For this reasons, when we want to clean our carpet, it is important to wisely choose a cleaning service that respects the environment and minimizes the risk for our health. Fortunately for us, in NY it is possible to find highly professional carpet cleaners, which use the most modern green technology to do their job,  and at the same time can offer the best possible answers to our doubt and questions.

1) https://dpmcare.com/4-reasons-hot-water-extraction-bad-carpet/#.W9ILA2gzZdg

2)  “Speed Up Your Drying Times: An increasingly common unique selling position for carpet cleaners today is rapid drying, which plays upon the customer’s fears and concerns about slow drying, discolorations returning, odor, mildew and GKW (Carpet Cleaning Basics)

3) https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2010/1197/pdf/OFR2010-1197.pdf

4) https://www.thespruce.com/eco-friendly-products-carpets-clean-1706993

5) http://www.bellchem.com/news/the-many-things-that-can-be-cleaned-with-d-limonene

6) Mollenkamp, Becky (2005-01-01). “A Deeper Understanding Of Carpet-Care Technology: Encapsulation technology and green products are two of the biggest trends in carpet care, according to industry manufacturers”.

7) http://www.repair-home.com/flooring/carpet/dry-carpet-cleaning.html

8) Cleaning Methods”. Carbon Dioxide Snow Cleaning. Applied Surface Technologies. Retrieved 13 August 2015.