The most exciting and controversial new technology...

Once again this year, the most exciting and controversial new technology on the Clean Show floor is a chemical system at the Proteus booth. The system uses salt and electricity to create the alkali and reducing agents used in laundry processing.

It is of no great surprise to me that the entrenched laundry chemical companies are talking the system down and actively looking for reasons why it will not work. The potential to generate your own wash chemicals and save the environmental impacts associated with trucking chemicals and their containers warms my environmentalist heart.

Eric Frederick is director of linen services for Carilion Laundry Service, Roanoke, Va., and a two-time Association for Linen Management manager of the year.