Greening Your Cleaning Program

With the popularity of the green movement on the rise and green cleaning products becoming more affordable, many facilities managers are implementing their own green cleaning programs for the first time. But the pressure to research, plan and successfully implement a timely and inexpensive program doesn’t have to be a daunting task, says Stephen Ashkin, executive director of the Green Cleaning Network, a nonprofit organization that provides educational information on green cleaning for facilities managers and building owners.

“[Facilities managers] do not need to reinvent the wheel,” says Ashkin. “They need to recognize there’s been a lot of work done on this issue over the years.” Instead of wasting time on fruitless web research, Ashkin recommends adopting an existing "road map" to green cleaning, such as the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED for Existing Buildings Rating System. This rating system sets prescriptive requirements for everything from green chemicals and products to janitorial training.

Other credible road maps include: The Environmental Standard for Cleaning Services by Green Seal, The Quick & Easy Guide to Green Cleaning in Schools by the Healthy Schools Campaign and Sustainable Cleaning Practices, Products, and Equipment by Practice Greenhealth.

Once you have chosen your guide, Ashkin recommends doing an audit to benchmark where the building currently is relative to your green cleaning program standards. This way, you’ll know exactly where you stand and how far you have to go to reach your goal.

Then, begin building a plan. “For example, take all the opportunities found during the audit, and if you found 100 things you could do, assign each opportunity to one of three buckets: The first bucket includes all those things that are easy to do, no cost or low cost; the second bucket are for those things that are hard to do or expensive; and finally a bucket for everything in the middle.

"The three bucket approach makes it easy to translate opportunities into a plan, so that the first things you do save money or don’t cost additional money,” says Ashkin.

But, you could do all of these things and still fall flat if you don’t have the support of management and staff, says Mark T. Petruzzi, vice president of Certification & Strategic Relations for Green Seal. “Educating the building owner or management, the staff that will actually be doing the cleaning, and the building owner or occupants is a key component of success,” says Petruzzi. “The products and procedures used in a green cleaning program need to be shared with all involved so that each participant can do their part.”

Another common mistake Petruzzi sees is making a one-to-one switch from regular to green products and calling it a day. “Using green products is only part of the answer to sound environmental operations,” he says. “Developing processes and procedures that address a cleaning program is the key to creating a healthier indoor environment.”

Ashkin also recommends taking a holistic viewpoint. It’s easy to replace paper products made from virgin fiber with those made from recycled content. But why stop there? “If your building has multi-fold paper hand towels and you convert to a large roll—preferably from a touch-free dispenser—it will reduce consumption by 25 to 30 percent, reducing both environmental impacts and cost.”

In the end, the thing to remember is that your decisions can make a difference on both a local, national and global scale. “The cleaning industry is huge,” says Ashkin. “Facilities managers make decisions that influence the cleaning industry. In effect, they are the drivers of industry.”