What to look for in a green janitorial company
Posted In : Education, The Dirt
Not very long ago, I wrote a guest article on GreenerBuildings.com that discusses what to look for in a green janitorial company. If you haven’t read it, I invite you to do it now. It discussed 10 questions that you should ask a prospective janitorial service provider if you want to go green. I was going to repost the entire article here, but thought I might run into some trouble plagiarizing myself, so decided to steer clear of that. However, as I have talked about the article with a number of people, I realized there should have been the Top 11 Questions, and not just a Top 10. My 11th question:
11. Can you tell me if your company has a specific green program, or if your entire company is focused on green? Are all of your customers on a green cleaning program today?
Here are my thoughts on this. Either the company you are evaluating is focused and commited to a healthier environment, or it isn’t. It’s quite simple. Yet, there are many janitorial companies out there that have a green program, green option or special green service. Especially hilarious are those companies who have a green cleaning option, yet claim they are the “Green Cleaning Leader.”
Let’s dig a little deeper. If a company has both a green cleaning and a traditional cleaning program, then one must be more effective then the other one, right? But which one? And if they are different, one of them must be more profitable for the building service contractor. And one of them must be more expensive for the customer to buy. And the green cleaning program must also be harder to implement, or manage, or maintain? And if it’s not less effective, more expensive, or harder to implement, manager or maintain, then why are there still two different options for customers to choose. I have a hard time believing that a company that is committed to minimizing environmental harm would offer the “more polluting” option alongside the “less polluting” option.
Maybe the companies that are offering both options are not really committed to minimizing healthier environments? Or maybe they don’t believe that green cleaning is here to stay. Either way, I’d be wary.
If you haven’t guessed by now, Eat My Dust only cleans one way, and it’s in an environmentally friendly manner.