End-to-end Delivery: Laundry & Ironing

Modern appliances have made life a lot easier for all of us. However, the bug-bear of many people's lives is the daily washing, drying and ironing of our clothes. This service alone would sell localnet to most single men. It should also help to release their long suffering partners from hours of tedium each week.

This section discusses:

• the Existing provision of this service: What, How, How Often, Costs, Providers and Trends
• the Proposed provision with localnet: What, How, How Often, Costs, Providers and Evolution
• how the existing and proposed services compare

Existing Provision

What

There are several closely related services that households need fulfilled in one way or another:

• basic wash and dry - for everyday clothes, kids school uniform etc.
• ironing - at least of shirts and skirts if not all items.
• dry cleaning of suits, dresses and the like on a less frequent basis

A related though rarely practiced but laudably “green” (sometimes literally) practice is

• washing of used cloth nappies (rather than using disposables)

How

Unless you live in a hotel and can afford for room service to take your dirty laundry away and bring it back beautifully ironed, you will making do with much less attractive options that include:

Basic wash, dry and iron we all muddle by somehow:

• gathering dirty clothes together somewhere in your house (or all over the floor) until you have enough for a washing machine load. Families may have several laundry bins around the house.
• using your own washing machine and drier or washing line or visiting a laundromat where you'll sit in line to put some money in a bigger machine. The latter can be very time consuming while in the case of doing it at home, domestic machines take up valuable space and are generally less efficient in terms of power and water usage than their industrial-sized cousins. Combined washer/driers save space but are normally even less efficient.
• ironing most of your clothes; feeling guilty that your partner does so and/or paying a home help to do so. This uses a lot of time and, at least for the men among us, gives results of highly variable quality.

Dry cleaning isn't required by everyone but can be really annoying when needed - which is always “yesterday”. This invariably requires a trip to town once in a while - followed by a further trip to collect them later. This latter exercise is particularly troublesome. Whereas you could take the dirty items screwed up in a shopping bag, there's little point paying for a suitor dress to be neatly pressed and then scrunching it up on the bus on your way home.

The reusable nappy concept is practiced in some areas but putting the sort of specialist toxic waste containment and transport facilities this needs in place when only one household in a few hundred will use it makes the proposition too expensive to thrive - or even survive in many cases.

Volume and Frequency

A typical family of four can easily generate a domestic washing machine load every day. While much of this can sit around for up to a week before being ready to wear again, there are times during the week when items are needed the next day: the rugby match on Saturday following practice on Friday for example.

Dry cleaning is much less frequently needed but because it takes significant cost and effort is often left till the last minute - at which point premium prices are charged for “same day” turnaround. If it was less hassle and cheaper, we'd not only be more likely to get it done when things get dirty rather than wait till we need them to be clean, we'd also be less wary of buying and wearing dry-clean only clothes.

Reusable nappies are at the opposite end of the spectrum. We don't actually care about getting the same ones back, as long as we always have a clean one at hand and never have to smell the used ones.

Financial Model

Few us can afford hotel laundry prices which can run to a pound or more per item.

Doing your own laundry hides the costs but they are still there and include:

• direct costs: washing powder, electricity, water
• overheads: amortisation of the cost of the machine(s)
• hidden costs: your time
• space costs: having a separate washing machine and drier takes up space - which will be more at a premium in the higher density (i.e. smaller) apartments being proposed in “sustainable” cities.

Laundry services with home collection and delivery do exist but really cost in only for those whose time is precious and who do not have access to another family member or house-keeper/cleaner that can do them as part of their role.

Dry cleaning services always feel, to me at least, to be very expensive. How much this could come down if they were better utilised is an interesting question.

Nappy cleaning services must be more expensive than they should be given the transport overheads associated with their collection and delivery.

Providers

Unlike most of the other services discussed, laundry is done by several very different groups:

• a huge proportion of the current demand for this service is met in the home, by the residents of the localnet area themselves. The burden often falls almost exclusively on the mother - who is already short of time.
• a sizeable fraction must also be done by cleaning staff as part of their duties.
• walk-in coin operated laundromats serve many single people who often live in small apartments or bed-sits and cannot justify or afford a washing machine and drier or who have nowhere to dry clothes
• dry cleaners typically in towns and cities compete for the expensive end of laundry - and do specialist services too - such as curtains, duvets, wedding dress cleaning etc.
• specialist nappy recycling companies are thin on the ground.

Trends

Detergents are being improved to provide better cleaning at lower temperatures. In parallel, domestic washing machines and driers are continually being improved and made more water- and energy-efficient but will always be at a disadvantage in comparison with their larger, industrial cousins. This is due to the same factors that make an oil-fired generator in a power station much more efficient than an emergency diesel generator.

The trend towards more casual wear at work, coupled with smart machine washable suits from the likes of Marks & Spencer must have seriously dented the throughput of dry cleaners.

The green movement should be making more of us use nappy cleaning services - but these are struggling against the more convenient disposables.

With Localnet

What

Assuming a localnet infrastructure is in place, the following services would be offered:

• Wash and Dry: everyday clothes, towels and bed linen washed and open-air or tumble dried to the same standard one would aspire to if doing it (carefully) in one's own home. This service is obviously aimed at those who currently use a laundromat but if the price and turnaround time is right, would appeal to those whose time and/or space is at a premium.
• Wash and Iron: for those with less time on their hands, reclaiming the hours a week spent ironing would be a godsend.
• Professional Dry-clean and/or Pressing: basically a direct replacement for the current dry cleaning service - but collected and delivered for you.
• Reusable Nappy Service: a very low hassle alternative to using disposables.

Although not every LocalHub may have all of these services within its catchment area (ideally at the hub itself for most), those it does not have simply take a little longer as the clothes are moved to and from the nearest service in a neighbouring LocalHub.

How

Each of these services is implemented very differently:

• Wash and Dry: Clothes are gathered in  OmniBox and collected along with recycling and empty boxes during the day. These are unloaded at a bank of large washing machines and driers either at or very near the LocalHub or on one of the delivery routes. There must be at least one spare of each type of machine so that overnight service is reliable - even if one fails.
• Wash and Iron: dovetails onto the wash and dry service. Many in the local community are likely to have time on their hands and be able to iron. This is therefore a useful part-time home-working scheme which allows many - e.g. those looking after young children - to work at their own pace and when it is convenient for them. Someone who knows they have time to iron a box of clothes would simply touch the picture of an ironing board on their localnet panel and wait for a box to arrive on the next round. When done, the box is placed back in the delivery hatch for collection - this time containing neatly folded and ironed clothes - without the need for any wrapping or packaging.
• Professional Dry-clean and/or Pressing: Ideally, a dry-cleaners is located at the LocalHub but, until then, at least one of the delivery routes needs to visit the dry-cleaners to deliver and collect. While dirty laundry can be delivered to the premises inside an  OmniBox, the cleaned and pressed items may be too large for this and have to be hung up on a rack inside a container along with other large items for delivery back to their owner.
• Reusable Nappy Service: dedicated  OmniBox should be used for hygiene reasons. These are not only airtight but may actually include a special “air-lock” mechanism to allow soiled nappies to be inserted into the box (a) without the smell of the others already in there escaping and (b) without “touching the sides” hence keeping the exterior of the box clean and pleasant. At the LocalHub a dedicated washing machine should probably be used. As nappies are interchangeable there is no need to track specific ones so a fully automated process can be designed. A reasonable buffer stock of nappies allows for uninterrupted service even if the machine breaks down on a Friday night and can't be repaired till Monday. The cleaned nappies can share the driers used for other washing hence no need for an additional machine.

Critical to the first three services is the ability to identify and keep track of which items belong to whom. This may mean a small RFID tag has to be attached to each item but can also be done by more traditional methods.

Volume and Frequency

As with the implementation, the volumes, frequency and turnaround times for these services differ:

• Wash and Dry: The intention should be that the majority of homes in the localnet area take advantage of at least the wash and dry service. If dirty washing is collected and delivered daily, a single  OmniBox will probably be large enough to cope with most households' daily needs. Sufficient volume to justify high levels of automation of this menial task should certainly be the goal. This may make it more appropriate to transport washing to a central depot overnight rather than deploy such facilities at each LocalHub. Regardless of where it is done, a next day service for boxes collected before the last round each day would give a comparable service to doing it yourself.
• Ironing, on the other hand is probably best done manually and hence more difficult to control both the quality and timeliness of completion. A standard service of 48 or even 72 hour turnaround should probably be the norm with a premium paid for guaranteed rapid turnaround.
• Dry cleaning certainly becomes more convenient by removing the collection and delivery hassle. This may increase the volume to the benefit of the businesses offering that service. If these companies business model works better at higher volumes, then a new, lower price-point may be appropriate to encourages significantly more use of the service. However, there will still be occasional cases of last minute “panic” where even localnet's same or next day service is not fast enough.
• Nappy cleaning may work best on a two or three day collection and delivery cycle according to how many nappies comfortably fit inside the NappyBox (divided by the number of babies in the house).

Financial Model

If overnight collection and delivery were available at low cost - because the infrastructure is there any way for other services, then it becomes practical to offer the kind of service we get in a hotel. However, ninety percent or so of the items using this service will not be needed the next day and hence overnight service is not essential. Laundry services therefore make a great “filler” for the delivery service:

• If there's space on a delivery van, fill it with any laundry boxes waiting to go “home”.
• If there's not, they wait till the later delivery.

They therefore help smooth the peaks and troughs that more urgent goods create and their delivery therefore adds little to the total cost of the system - very rarely requiring a dedicated trip.

A full environmental assessment of the carbon and resource footprint of bringing the bulk of a neighbourhood's washing into an industrial-scale, at least semi-automated system needs to be done. This would then feed into the decision on how to price each of the four services. This would take into account energy, water and detergent use plus the volume and degree of pollution of the waste water.

Studies of reusable versus disposable nappies have already been done and their results also need to be taken into account. The net benefits of this approach may mean that costs are actually subsidised to encourage the take-up of these services and the reduction in use of washing machines and tumble driers in the home.

If there is real environmental benefit to be gained here, then we need to encourage a significant proportion of people to use the service. This, in turn, brings the cost per item down as it justifies more automated and more efficient processing. The pricing of this service should therefore be as low as practical and should probably be pitched at the level that makes economic sense if the majority of households use the service.

In the case of ironing, an interesting option is to allow people to trade their time. Someone doing a box of ironing for a student at their local university might trade this for someone in the town their son is living doing a box of his ironing. While not terribly lucrative, this removes one excuse grown up children have for not leaving home!

Providers

In a localnet system, the services would be provided as follows:

• Wash and Dry + Nappies: Centralised, at least partially automated. Probably outsourced to specialist providers who build dedicated facilities to handle items from several nearby LocalHubs.
• Ironing: predominantly part-time workers on localnet routes
• Dry-cleaning: existing companies who will gradually move their premises to be in or near to LocalHubs. Or, more industrial scale operations probably in the same premises and under the same ownership as the Wash and Dry service above.

Evolution

Those who use laundromats today will probably switch immediately to localnet “Wash and Dry” and/or “Wash and Iron” services. The rest of us have a washing machine and drier. The more affluent (and hence often time-poor) will jump at the chance of ironing services that probably cost no more than the hourly rate that a home-help would be charging.

The rest of us will probably continue to use our washing machine and drier until one or other needs to replaced - at which point we might reclaim some space by opting for a combined washer-drier that we only use when we need something immediately. The bulk of our washing would then be handled in a more environmentally friendly way by the localnet service.

Take-up of reusable nappy cleaning will be heavily influenced by cost. They will never be quite as convenient as disposables (though, actually, having to include disposable nappies in increasingly complex recycling/compostable/landfill waste disposal practices may make them less attractive). There is certainly scope here to offer cost incentives to make this option more attractive than continuing to fill holes in the ground with disposable nappies.

 

Comparison

The table below assesses the impact of localnet on this service on a scale of -5 to +5 (details here)

	Existing services	As part of localnet	Score
Scope	Laundry and Nappy cleaning patchy. Dry Cleaning in towns.	Laundry, ironing, dry cleaning and nappy cleaning available.	+3
Frequency	Same day turnaround available. Mostly next day.	Same day through cheaper 2-3 day turnaround options.	+1
Security	Barely applicable.	Barely applicable.	0
Convenience	Dry cleaning quite inconvenient. Collect and deliver only viable for large quantities.	Automatic daily collection and delivery.	+3
Cost	Expensive.	Should be cheaper.	+1
Quality	Good where available.	Home-workers won't always be as good as professionals for ironing	-1
Carbon Footprint	Domestic machine efficiencies. Travel solely to/from dry cleaners.	Industrial machines more efficient. Shared transport overheads.	+2
Time	Very time consuming.	Wonderfully liberating.	+4
Resources Used	Detergent, water used once.	Industrial machines more efficient and may be able to recycle grey water?	+1
Reuse & Recycling	Domestic machines replaced every few years - components may be recycled.	Industrial machines tend to be maintained and have longer life rather than thrown away.	+2
Landfill Waste	Outer wrappings on delivered clean clothes.	Outer wrappings not needed at all for clothes delivered in  OmniBoxes l	+1
Other Differentiators		Ironing becomes a valuable part-time home-working opportunity.	+2