A Guide To Environmental Cleaning for Research on Cancer or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). information: “ready biodegradability” ensures that a material degrades rela-tively quickly. ■ Choose products made with plant-based, rather than petroleum-based, ingredients where possible. ■ Choose cleaning products in the largest container sizes available to avoid wast-ed packaging. Where possible select bottles made from recycled plastic. ■ Choose concentrated formulas where appropriate, containing up to 20 per-cent water. These require less packag-ing and shipping fuel. ■ Look out for accredited environmen-tal cleaning labels: European prod-ucts, for example, use the EU Ecolabel, championing products and services with reduced environmental impacts across their life cycle. Ensure that your dishwashers and clothes washers are certified ENERGY STAR too. ■ Biodegradable bin bags and recycled toilet tissue provide additional bene-fits, with the latter reducing worldwide paper demand and deforestation. ■ For windows you can source environ-mentally friendly glass cleaner made from high-purity water-soluble sol-vents; you can also buy green hard floor cleaner for polished and non-polished floors. might then need replacing if not maintained correctly. Marble, for example, should be on the whole cleaned with a neutral, nonabrasive cleaner in order to maintain its natural finish. Rather than focusing solely on sourcing environmentally friendly cleaning products, it is therefore useful to look at the overall im-pact of your cleaning function — after all, an environmentally friendly oven cleaner which arrives diluted, heavily packaged and re-quires weekly replacement is likely to be less green in the longer term. Persil’s “Small and Mighty” campaign em-phasizes this approach well: By combining concentrated cleaning products with cor-rect dosage and lower water and packaging requirements, you can improve the environ-mental impact of your resources. Natural Cleaning Products Everyday cleaning jobs can be carried out successfully by using natural products. These have the least impact on the envi-ronment and provide a really cost-effective method of cleaning. Most cleaning jobs can be solved with water, liquid Castile soap, vinegar or baking soda. Tougher jobs can also be helped by com-bining one cup of Borax with vinegar or lemon juice. A decent amount of elbow grease and a strong scourer will remove the requirement for chemical cleaners. Salt is an abrasive solution and can be used to scrub surfaces or get rid of rust and mildew; it also helps polish copper and silver. Castile soap has a wide variety of uses and can serve as an all-purpose cleaner or degreaser. Implementing Environmental Strategy Across Your Organization Your environmental cleaning procurement needs to be central to your overall environ-mental strategy. If your organization has a sustainability team, formulate relationships with cleaning stakeholders to identify suitable products and assess their on-going performance lev-els at regular intervals. The EPA suggests five guiding principles when buying green cleaning products: ■ Include environmental factors along-side price and performance character-istics during the purchasing process ■ Emphasize pollution prevention early on ■ Examine all environmental factors throughout a product or service’s life cycle ■ Compare relative environmental impacts when choosing particular products and services ■ Base your purchasing decisions on accurate information regarding environ-mental performance. Communicate with staff via newsletters or e-mail to raise awareness of environmental policy; demonstrate how your cleaning and waste management processes create a bet-ter working environment. The more you educate staff the better they will be at understanding how an envi-ronmental policy can help your organization and the environment at large. CM Identifying Greener Chemical Alternatives Commercial cleaning agents are imperative for a number of particularly difficult clean-ing jobs. We recommend that you select environ-mentally friendly commercial cleaning prod-ucts, where possible, ensuring that your portfolio of products effectively balances environmental concerns with overall busi-ness requirements. You may need to trade-off desirable char-acteristics against others: While one prod-uct may be made with renewable resources, another product might have a lower VOC content. Decide what is most appropriate while ac-counting for cost, performance, availability and regulatory requirements. Use the following guide when choosing green commercial cleaning products: ■ Many products may claim to be “eco-logically-friendly” or “natural,” but with-out additional information you will be unable to understand their true value — look out for “solvent-free,” “phosphate-free” or equivalent. ■ In terms of biodegradability, look out for products that provide additional Changing Working Habits And Practices Successfully implementing green cleaning requires more than merely altering your buy-ing habits. You must also ensure that members of your staff are properly trained in their use of products in order to maximize effectiveness and minimize wastage. Although some cleaning agents may ap-pear to be less beneficial for the environ-ment, if used at the correct dosage, they will reduce overall resource requirements and could be a better product to use for the envi-ronment in the longer term. By only using concentrated liquids, you can cut down on the packaging and trans-port costs involved, too. By training staff in selecting the appro-priate cleaning agent for particular clean-ing jobs, you can avoid wastage and re-duce the risk of damaging surfaces, which 30 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® • July 2013
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