Why Use Green Cleaning Products?

by EnvirOx

Healthy, green cleaning can help you cut your cleaning costs, get better results, and improve the wellbeing of everyone in your facilities. Sound too good to be true? It’s not. Let’s take a look at why you should use green cleaning products — for your budget, your staff, and your customers.

Why we clean

First, ask yourself why we clean at all. Just for appearances? It may seem like that, but you and your staff are actually the frontline of defense for the health of everyone who enjoys your cleaning services. We clean to protect health! By cleaning, we remove contaminants that make us sick, like allergens, germs and bacteria. We remove the food source for pests who carry contagions and we prevent slips and falls on dirty floors. So if cleaning for health seems like a stretch — surprise! You’re already doing it. Now the key is to do it on purpose.

Cleaning for health becomes even more important when you think about the people in your facilities. As of 2012, about half of all adults have a chronic health condition. One in four have two or more chronic conditions, according to the CDC, and 8% of adults and 9.3% of children have asthma.

Air quality, surface cleanliness, and chemical exposure can affect all of these conditions. Cleaning chemicals specifically can be linked to inducing asthma attacks, allergies, cancer, chemical burns, and poisonings. Your choice of cleaning chemical matters!

Cutting costs with green cleaning (and making life easier)

In a perfect world, of course you’d be using the healthiest, most effective cleaning program. However, in the real world, we have to deal with things like budgets, inventory space and training, not to mention the time crunch we all find ourselves in more often than not. Nowadays, doing less with more is a common mantra, and we’re all trying to keep up. You might be surprised to learn that green, healthy cleaning can actually improve your bottom line and make your life easier.

  1. Safer products reduce worker’s comp issues. Right now, six out of 100 custodial workers have a chemical-related worker’s comp claim per year.
  2. Safer chemicals also reduce surface wear & tear. If it’s safe for the environment and safe for people, the product probably isn’t going to hurt your carpet, either.
  3. Sustainable, concentrated chemicals often have a high yield — that is, the concentrated chemical makes a lot of in-use cleaning product. This can lead to big in-use savings over ready-to-use products that end up in landfills.

Easy steps to green

Now that we’ve seen all the ways green cleaning makes a big difference, to your staff and to your pocketbook, what are some easy ways to get started?

  1. You’re here! Explore the rest of our green cleaning guide for great tips on navigating the world of green.
  2. Enlist third party resources. There are plenty of great, qualified sources that give step-by-step instructions for businesses like yours. For example, the Healthy School Campaign produces a guide to green cleaning in schools. The best practices in guides like this can usually be applied across the board.
  3. Start easy. Even something as simple as switching cleaning chemicals or paper goods to a greener product can make a big difference.

 

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