Mac-Gray and Carbonfund.org make student laundry GHG free

Mac-Gray Corporation, provides debit-card and coin-operated laundry equipment to various universities for student use.  Besides offering water and energy efficient equipment, Mac-Gray also provides green house gas (GHG) free equipment by partnering with Carbonfund.org.

Green has covered other companies like Venom and Motorola that have partnered with Carbonfund.org to offset the carbon footprints of their products.  The Carbonfund.org provides a way for universities, companies, individuals and organizations to connect with third party environmental organizations to offset GHG emissions.

Doing laundry generates GHG from the equipment.  As part of its Clean & Green Vision, Mac-Gray supports three methane destruction projects.  The three projects have met the “criteria set forth by the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment 2008 Voluntary Carbon Offset Protocol in that they must represent immediate and verifiable GHG emissions reduction.”

"We recognize that the first step in lessening laundry’s carbon footprint is reducing energy consumption, which is why we recommend the most water- and energy-efficient washers and dryers. We then rely on our ‘Lighten the Load’ initiative to offset unavoidable emissions," said Michael Calderaro, Mac-Gray’s Vice President of Campus Laundry.

Mac-Gray’s green house gas initiative impressed several universities who chose the company’s equipment because of it.  The fourteen Universities who chose Mac-Gray are:  Colorado College, Colorado State University, Eastern Connecticut State University, Keene State College, Salisbury University, Stonehill College, University of Montevallo, University of North Carolina (UNC) at Charlotte, UNC Wilmington, University of South Carolina (USC) at Aiken, USC Upstate and Western Carolina University. 

"In selecting a laundry services company for our campus, our University chose Mac-Gray because it is a company that cares about the environment and is willing to invest their own money to offset the carbon footprint that our washers and dryers produce. This partnership is an important part of the university’s overall sustainability initiative," says Ron Dalton, director of housing at the University of South Carolina Upstate in Spartanburg, S.C.

Whether students realize that their laundry pollutes more than just their dorm room doesn’t really matter.  At least now when they wash their clothes, at least some of the GHGs produced by their dirty laundry are offset.

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