Word Environment Day, June 6th : By Kenney Slatten

Some of us in this industry will greet this with a wink and a nod, others will take it very seriously. Particularly, younger folks, or those new to the industry. The environment is important to us all. I cringe every time I see someone throw out trash on the highway. I fume when I see trees cut down unnecessarily to feed the so-called “progress movement” of build, build, build. Thankfully, scientists have made inroads with crude oil in positive ways such as durable plastics to replace wood or steel. I really get excited if it’s from something recycled.

Movies that show things being torn down or vehicles/machinery being destroyed turns my stomach. We are supposed to be a nation of builders, not destroyers. It has come to the point that we create very little in this country anymore. Most of it is politics as usual, but a great deal of this so-called progress (which I refer to as regress) is from plain old laziness.

“Why Environment Day For Drycleaners?”

The questions posed and themes covered by environmental history date back to antiquity: historians have always included the effects of natural phenomena on human affairs. It was only natural that it took root in 1983 with our industry as they scrutinized the hazardous waste from drycleaning. It was Hippocrates, ancient Greek father of medicine, in his Airs, Waters, Places, who asserted that different cultures and human temperaments could be related to the surroundings in which peoples lived. However, the origins of the subject in its present form are generally traced to the twentieth century. The old cowboy does love history.

Much of this has to do with our beloved industry. We still create things here in the good old USA. Naturally, our chemicals and processes come under scrutiny by the environment. Sadly, a lot of operators hide behind the science and others stick it in the public’s face as if to discredit their brethren of drycleaning. No one can help what was done in the past. You cannot scold someone for running a stop sign that wasn’t there yesterday!

In 1929, a group of French historians founded the journal Annales, in many ways a fore runner of modern environmental history since it took as its subject matter the reciprocal global influences of the environment and human society. The idea of the impact of the physical environment on civilizations was espoused by this Annales School to describe the long term developments that shape human history by focusing away from political and intellectual history, toward agriculture, demography, and geography. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, a pupil of the Annales School, was the first to really embrace, in the 1950s, environmental history in a more contemporary form. One of the most influential members of the Annales School was Lucien Febvre (1878–1956), whose book A Geographical Introduction to History is now a classic in the field. This is a must read for those interested.

The most influential empirical and theoretical work in the subject has been done in the United States where teaching programs first emerged and a generation of trained environmental historians is now active in the United States environmental history as an independent field of study emerged in the general cultural reassessment and reform of the 1960s and 1970s. Along with environmentalism, “conservation history” and a gathering awareness of the global scale of some environmental issues.

Our industry fought this hypothesis hard but lost in the end. Thanks to DLI, notably Bill, Mary and Jon, we stood behind every drycleaner in the world to try and help. Anyone who will say otherwise is simply ignorant of the history. No solvent or process was ever favored over another, we all just tried to do the right thing and keep up with ever changing environmental laws.

However, we did learn from the battle and how to pick the battles, so to speak. Working with the environmental groups instead of against them has proven to be the better way to go. This was in large part a reaction to the way nature was represented in history at the time, which “portrayed the advance of culture and technology as releasing humans from dependence on the natural world and providing them with the means to manage it [and] celebrated human mastery over other forms of life and the natural environment. And so, this history trickled down to drycleaning and some of the naitivity that bound to happen.

I am convinced that if we all do our part to keep the world clean, our present and our kids’ future will please God. All one needs to do is follow the rules (keep the lawyers at bay) and celebrate World Environment Day by doing your part to have a clean earth. Most of us already are. However, please, don’t drag your fellow drycleaner down just because you think you have a smarter and greener solvent.

I’m headin’ to the wagon now, these boots are killin’ me!

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