Idaho Cleaning Museum Gets Green Award

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — An Idaho cleaning entrepreneur's museum celebrating his industry's not-so-spotless history is also green. The Idaho Division of Environmental Quality gave the Museum of Clean in Pocatello its "2013 Pollution Prevention Champion Award."

Don Aslett, the owner of Varsity Cleaners and founder of the museum, says he remodeled the 1915 building that houses his ode to cleaning through the years with the environment in mind, using special non-reflective windows and energy-saving LED lighting.

The Idaho State Journal reports Aslett's obsession with reducing his environmental footprint extended to capturing rainwater and using it for irrigation and flushing the toilets. The museum opened in 2011 and includes old toilets, vintage vacuums and descriptions of the consequences of poor urban hygiene: vermin-infested 18th-century cities where disease-plagued residents huddled together in dirt and squalor.