Training to Create a Green Cleaning Culture

Why Green Cleaning is becoming more a part of everyday FM, and what needs to be done to make sure it stays that way

by Stephen Ashkin — Without question, Green Cleaning has been a trend in the professional cleaning, building and facility maintenance industries for several years. After a difficult start many years ago—mainly due to some expensive green products that unfortunately did not perform well—Green Cleaning has become essentially status quo in most large and small facilities throughout the United States.

While Green Cleaning appears to be becoming routine, that does not mean it will stop evolving. The biggest change I anticipate does not relate to cleaning chemicals, tools, and equipment. Nor does it involve Green Cleaning processes and strategies. Instead, the next stage of Green Cleaning is all about people and the evolution of a Green Cleaning culture.

As I mentioned, there was early reluctance to use many Green Cleaning products, and this was primarily on the part of facility managers and custodial workers. However, today, these people are embracing Green products for reasons such as cost effectiveness, performance, and their reduced impact on health and the environment. Plus for many facility managers, Green Cleaning is a requirement whether due to participation in the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Rating System or as a result of state legislation especially for schools and public buildings. And in many cases, organizations now select Green Cleaning products completely bypassing traditional products in the same way they consider LED or fluorescent lights and avoid incandescent bulbs all together.

This has become the foundation of a culture. It means everyone who uses a facility and is involved in facility maintenance and management—cleaning workers, management, staff, vendors, building users—believes using Green Cleaning products and strategies is preferable. In other words, it’s just naturally what they do, and of course this is resulting in several significant benefits.

Among the benefits we now see from Green Cleaning are the following:

  • Green Cleaning products can help reduce asthma rates in schoolchildren, a serious problem that has been growing exponentially over the past 30 years.
  • Green Cleaning products are safer for cleaning workers to use as well as for building occupants.
  • Green Cleaning products have less impact on waterways as well as the indoor and natural environments.
  • Green Cleaning products promote sustainability. Many Green chemical products are made from ingredients derived from renewable resources such as corn, soy, sugarcane and palm oil; whereas most conventional cleaning products are made from nonrenewable resources such as petroleum, coal and natural gas. And many Green paper products are utilizing fibers from forests that were certified as sustainable or agricultural/plantation grown fibers in addition to recycled content; whereas traditional paper is made from virgin fiber.
  • Green Cleaning promotes innovation and ongoing improvement. As the demand for Green products has increased, manufacturers have responded by investing more dollars into Green research and development. The result has been greener products that further reduce impacts on health and the environment, devices that are replacing many cleaning chemicals altogether, paper products that reduce packaging and consumption, equipment that clean floors and carpets using less water and chemicals, and systems that reduce the consumption of energy such as those in laundry and kitchen operations.
Fostering a Culture

Often trends just seem to have happened. While this may be true in some cases, it certainly was not true of Green Cleaning. It took years of hard work by advocates to educate manufacturers, custodial workers, building managers, and cleaning-related associations so that they would realize the potential harmful impacts of conventional cleaning products and how environmentally preferable products can eliminate or minimize those concerns. And perhaps more importantly, to make it easy for them to overcome the many performance, cost, availability of supply, procurement and use issues that are the typical barriers to change.

However our work does not stop. In order for a culture to be preserved and grow, there must be ongoing education and reinforcement of the new norms and values. This applies to both building managers and—more important—cleaning workers.

Such an ongoing education process should include the following tactics:

  • Continue to emphasize the benefits of Green Cleaning products to the user.
    Studies continue to list professional cleaning as one of the most hazardous occupations. Often this is related to the use of cleaning chemicals—even those that are used correctly. While Green Cleaning chemicals, like many chemicals, can be dangerous if improperly used, they tend to be safer for the user than traditional products. These facts must continue to be emphasized. Plus it is a valuable opportunity to reinforce that you care about them and their health and are willing to go above and beyond basic regulatory requirements.
  • Continue to teach the processes of Green Cleaning.
    The Green Cleaning Network, Healthy Schools Campaign, worldwide cleaning association ISSA, along with other organizations view Green Cleaning as much more than simply using environmentally preferable cleaning products. It also involves such things as understanding how to safely use cleaning chemicals, fully understanding proper cleaning techniques and procedures, understanding what makes a product Green and how to identify certified Green Cleaning products so that they can be purchased and used with confidence.
  • Encourage feedback and interaction.
    A Green Cleaning culture requires that people be able to discuss the program, ask questions, make suggestions, and fully understand why a Green Cleaning program has been adopted. Listening, interacting, and responding to issues helps people “own” a concept, and that is critical to the formation of a culture.
  • Review and reinforce the message.
    While in one sense this is part of a continuing education program, it also involves something more. Cleaning workers, like so many of us, have a tendency to return to old ways of doing things (backsliding). However, when it comes to cleaning, those old ways may be ineffective or even detrimental to the Green program. The old ways have to be untrained; the new ways must become automatic and reinforced over and over again.
  • Focus on the future.
    As a result of the success of the Green Cleaning Movement, we should expect the rate of improvement and innovation to continue to accelerate. Whether it is testing new technology and processes, or meeting new requirements in Version 4 of the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance Rating System (LEED-EBOM) where projects must develop strategies to reduce energy, water and chemicals used in cleaning activities, cleaning workers can help when given the right information and encouraged to participate.

Because ongoing education is so critical to the continued growth of a Green Cleaning culture, it is important to realize that people learn in different ways. For facility managers, a classroom setting may be a perfect environment to learn Green Cleaning; but for custodial workers, it may be the worst.

Instead, an effective Green Cleaning program is taught and retaught to cleaning workers using hands-on training in the cleaning workers’ first language. Using the products in the facilities they clean every day and seeing how they perform and how effective they are instills confidence in the products and procedures and encourages the ongoing adoption of Green Cleaning.

Whether the cleaning workers are employed by the owner of the building or a third-party contractor, it is essential that the facility manager ensures that the training is taking place and that a conscious effort is being made to create a culture of sustainability.

Stephen P. Ashkin is Executive Director of the Green Cleaning Network a not-for-profit organization dedicated to educating building owners and suppliers about Green Cleaning, and president of The Ashkin Group a consulting firm specializing in Greening the cleaning industry. He is considered the “father of Green Cleaning” and is coauthor of both The Business of Green Cleaning and Green Cleaning for Dummies.

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