All for the “Greta” Good
We outline the ways we are making our commercial cleaning company green
When a 16-year-old Swedish girl starts an international youth movement against climate change, it is a clear indication that more needs to be done to protect the environment. We all know we have a personal and business carbon footprint, yet knowing how to minimise or offset it, is not always clear.
At It's Clean, we have reviewed all our processes and operations, in order to identify how we can reduce our carbon footprint.
Here are just a few of the areas of improvement we have identified in our business.
Buying concentrated cleaning solutions
Originally, we were buying diluted spray cleaners which required a large delivery of product to many locations each week. This method of working incurred many lorry miles and a large amount of plastic waste from used bottles of various cleaning fluids.
After some research and product testing, we found similar products in a concentrated solution. So, now we mix the concentrated cleaning solutions with the right amount of water at each cleaning site.
We have reduced our disposal of plastic bottles from 15,000 to just 900 per annum. Additionally, deliveries have been less frequently required which has reduced lorry miles.
Using our company vans responsibly
Our fleet of company vans allows our cleaning operatives to get to their cleaning sites.
We have now requested that all our cleaners share lifts if they are going to the same site, or working nearby, thereby reducing carbon emissions.
Fewer miles equals fewer emissions
We have always made sure our company vans are serviced on schedule and our average miles per gallon exceeds the manufacturers published performance data.
We also recruit cleaners who are local to our cleaning sites, which reduces the road miles they have to travel to and therefore the net carbon emissions.
We were already operating with a focus on the environment before Greta hit the headlines, but she has prompted us to keep on challenging ourselves to be kinder to our environment.
