Valley City Linen goes greener in Grand Rapids to save 8M gallons of water annually

In the peak of the summer season, Grand Rapids-based Valley City Linen washes about 450,000 pounds of commercial laundry a week. As of last week, the company (10 Diamond Ave. SE) has a water efficient Milnor PulseFlow Technology Continuous Batch Washer (CBW) that will handle about half of that workload using only 0.3 gallons of water per pound, dropping the company’s water usage by nearly 8 million gallons per year, says Jeff Jeltema, owner.

Jeltema and his brothers Greg and Tim own Valley City Linen, which was started by their grandfather Paul Jeltema in 1935. The company has occupied the 10 Diamond site since 1937, when it was just a storefront and subbed out the laundry. Now Valley City has 180 employees and distribution centers in Traverse City and Metro Detroit, but handles all the laundry processing in Grand Rapids.

Valley City Linen was quick to jump on the new technology which was introduced by the manufacturer last December.

“We did a major expansion to our washroom in 1995 and put in a CBW then, which used 0.6 gallons of water per pound,” Jeff Jeltema says. “But the new technology is so much better, we’re cutting our water consumption in half on the CBW and it handles a lot more laundry.”

Jeltema says the environmental advantages also include using less energy to heat a smaller amount of water and having less dirty water to discard. In turn, the CBW will cut costs and increase the company’s cleaning capacity without requiring a building expansion. That could result in future jobs.

Source: Jeff Jeltema, Valley City Linen
Writer: Deborah Johnson Wood, Development News Editor