BLANC, the London-based artisan cleaner and tailor, has announced that their Atelier now operates without any single-use plastic.

In a post on LinkedIn, founder and CEO at Blanc, Ludovic Blanc, said: “I am so proud and excited to announce that BLANC is NOT using any single-use plastic in its operations anymore

“It has taken BLANC’s operations team two years of extensive research and very hard work to achieve this result. We really mean it when we say that innovation of this scale and an industry-leading business transformation of this level, is not for the faint-hearted!

“The cost of some of the key materials that we require has increased threefold, but it is entirely worth it. We have managed to phase out single-use plastic and reduced our packaging use by a whopping 25 per cent!

“This is a genuine win-win situation for our customers, our team, and most importantly our planet. Another big step on our journey at BLANC.”

BLANC was founded on a drive to create an environmentally-sound business model in the garment care industry, continually looking closely at every aspect of their operation to find ways to limit damage to the planet.

In a newsletter to customers, Evan Charalampous, head of operations at BLANC said: “Single-use plastic is a major issue in the drycleaning industry and this transition has been a huge challenge for a business of our size. Plastic-free alternatives to our current packaging are often incredibly expensive, inaccessible, or even impossible to source.

“However, after years of research and development, we’re happy to have found all the alternatives to the plastic elements we use in our Atelier.”

One of the biggest impacts was the replacement of the plastic film used for garment covers and the shirt bags with a 100 per cent compostable alternative. It’s made from plant-based bioplastic resins that contain high shares of biologically sourced polymers such as PLA and potato starch – an alternative to traditional fossil-fuels that allows packaging to decompose back into nature. It has the same protective qualities as the original, just with a much lower environmental impact.

Educating customers about how to dispose correctly of the bags is a key focus for the team. The bags are certified as home compostable and can simply be put into the compost bin or even reused as food bin liners.

The material takes between 9-12 months to compost at home, depending on the conditions. If it is taken by your local council it can take 3-6 months.

Replacements have also been sourced and introduced for neck strips and stuffers which are now made of cardboard, so they can be easily recycled at home. The shirt clips are made of metal and can be recycled or reused.

If customers can’t recycle through their local council they are being encouraged to hand back to the driver and they’ll be reused onsite at BLANC.

BLANC has heavily invested in these alternatives but will not be passing the costs on to their customers as they say, “it is essential for us to embed sustainability into all aspects of our services and operations.”

Charalampous concludes: “We are endlessly proud to have achieved this as a company, it is a huge step on our sustainability journey and on our mission to leave behind a better planet.”

BLANC is now working on measuring their carbon footprint and this achievement has already gone some way to considerably reducing their impact.