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Environment / Conservation / Sustainability

Green Cleaning

LEED

1.

What are some easy ways that I can conserve water in my building?

2.

Does cleaning really have that much of an impact on the environment?

Question #1: What are some easy ways that I can conserve water in my building?

Protecting natural resources and promoting sustainability are critical components of Green cleaning. We want to use chemicals, products, and resources so that our use of them today will not impair future generations from using them. With large areas of the world afflicted by water shortages and droughts at any one time, incorporating water conservation measures is important today and will be come even more so in the future.

The North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources' Division of Pollution Prevention and Environmental
Assistance offers many of the following tips for water efficiency and conservation. These guidelines can be applied to schools,
dormitories, office buildings, hospitals, and other commercial/institutional settings.

• Place posters/signs/stickers in restrooms as conservation reminders. Include contact information for reporting leaks.
• For tank-type toilets with 3.5-gallon or greater flush, install dams or low-flow flapper valves to decrease consumption per flush. For a long-term solution, consider replacing toilets with ultra-low flow models.
• Consider no-water urinals. One conventional urinal uses as much as 40,000 gallons of potable water per year.
• Retrofit flushometer toilets with water-saving diaphragms.
• Shut off cooling units when they are not needed.
• As restroom fixtures, appliances, and water-using equipment wear out, replace with water saving models.
• Sweep paved areas to clean rather than hosing off.
• Conventional carpet extractors use as much as 3-4 gallons of water per minute. Switching to low moisture equipment can reduce this by more than 75 percent.
• Select floor-cleaning equipment that uses less chemical and water such as cylindrical brush machines.
• Properly dilute cleaning chemicals. Use only as much chemical as necessary to perform the task satisfactorily. Too much chemical is wasteful and harmful to the environment.
• Use microfiber cleaning clothes and mop heads. They use less water and are more absorbent than conventional cleaning clothes and mop heads.
• Water building landscape areas during the coolest part of the day (late evenings or early morning are often best).
• Have soil tested for nutrient content and add organic matter if needed. Good soil absorbs and retains water more efficiently.
• “Core aerate” lawns so that the soil is not overly compacted and they use and retain water more efficiently.
  • Inspect ice machines to see if they use once-through cooling water. If they do, replace the unit with an air-cooled system or a recirculation water system.
• Encourage programs that allow facility staff to look for and report leaks and constantly running water sources.
• Check timing cycles and volumes for automatic water-flushing systems in urinals and toilets. Coordinate automatic systems with office hours so they do not run continuously.

Question #2: Does cleaning really have that much of an impact on the environment?

There are approximately four million commercial buildings in the United States, and we can assume that every one of them has to be cleaned on a regular basis, if not daily. To clean these buildings requires enormous quantities of cleaning products that have a sizable impact on the environment in terms of resource consumption, product use, and disposal. Consider this:

• More than six billion pounds of cleaning chemicals are used annually. And most are made from petroleum, a limited,
  nonrenewable natural resource.
• Cleaning chemicals contribute 8 percent of nonvehicular volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to the atmosphere, which cause smog when they evaporate.
• Many of the ingredients used to formulate traditional cleaning products are known to be harmful when used and once again when they are disposed of down a drain. These ingredients are damaging to aquatic life and plants, and they can reenter the food chain.
• More than five billion pounds of janitorial paper products are used annually around the world. Currently the majority of them are made from virgin tree fiber, requiring the cutting of 25 to 50 million trees annually, making a huge impact on our forests.
• Production of paper products has enormous environmental impact; the paper products industry is the third-largest user of energy in our country.
• A significant portion of traditional paper products are bleached with chlorine, which can be extremely toxic to the environment.
• Five hundred million pounds of janitorial equipment such as vacuum cleaners and floor buffers are discarded annually and disposed of in landfills—an amount large enough to fill 10,000 garbage trucks.
• Many floor machines such as automatic floor scrubbers and carpet extraction machines use large quantities of chemical and water. The chemicals used in floorcare are, in fact, considered some of the most harmful in the industry.

Question #3: We are in the process of purchasing new computers, printers, and other electronic equipment. What is a “Green” way of disposing of our current electronic equipment?

This is an excellent and timely question because as the cost of computers and monitors and other electronic equipment have come down, businesses are less hesitant to upgrade on a regular basis.  However, disposing of the old equipment can be harmful to the environment.

When people first become more environmentally conscious about 30 years ago, one of the big targets or concerns at that time was factory waste and the amount of pollutants manufacturing centers were spewing into the air and water.

At about the same time, the adage “reuse and recycle” was first coined. Today, many of those early pollution issues and concerns have been addressed and most North American factories are cleaner and less polluting than ever before. However, we are confronting new recycling challenges, and one of the major ones involves the recycling of what you are using to read this article right now—the computer--and other electronics.

A single statistic explains why this is becoming such a major, modern-day problem. It was estimated that by 2005 more than 45 million computers--each containing traces of lead, cadmium, and other hazardous chemicals--had been dumped into landfills, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
In addition, the same report estimated that 500 million television sets—that’s more than one for every man, woman, and child in North America—had become junk and been dumped into landfills, also threatening to leach many of the same toxins into the earth. And as these computers, televisions, and other electronics become less and less expensive, causing consumers to buy more of them and to replace older models more frequently, it is believed these numbers will jump considerably.
This is why the recycling of computers, televisions, PDAs, cell phones, pagers, and scores of other electronics items is now front and center in the minds of environmentalists and others concerned about our planet. However, and unfortunately, computer and electronics recycling is still in its infancy. 
While several states and provinces now have or encourage some type of electronics recycling program or re-use incentives, most are waiting for the federal government to step in and provide further, more comprehensive guidance. Until then, many businesses and individuals are on their own. However, there are many computer and electronics recycling and refurbishing options available.

• Contact your computer manufacturer (see the list below) to see if it has a recycling program in place. Virtually all U.S. manufacturers have some sort of “take-back" program, which either reuses or recycles salvageable parts or properly destroys of those that cannot be reused.
  
• The Rethink Initiative hosted by eBay (http://rethink.ebay.com/) has a computer recycling FAQ section and includes many useful links to recyclers.
  
• The Environmental Protection Agency's eCycling Web site (http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/osw/conserve/plugin) provide information on how to recycle electronics.
  
• The Basel Action Network Web site carries a list of electronics recyclers (http://www.ban.org/pledge1.html) that have pledged not to export e-waste or add it to landfills.
• Drop off old cell phones at local Staples stores as part of a joint recycling project with the Sierra Club (http://www.sierraclub.org/cellphones).
• Drop-off centers for rechargeable batteries and cell phones can be found by visiting the nonprofit Web site Call2Recycle at http://www.rbrc.org. 

Additionally, the following manufacturers all have recycling programs:

Question #4: Where can I incorporate automatic systems in my facility?

A key part of Greening a facility involves making it more sustainable—using resources in a more responsible manner to protect future generations. For instance, a wide variety of systems regulate electricity throughout a facility, lights can be controlled by schedules or when a room or area is used, and dimming options are available so that lighting can be reduced if the area is not needed or enough sunlight is present to make the lighting unnecessary. In addition, many types of office equipment, from fax machines to computers and printers, are designed to essentially turn themselves off if not used for a specific amount of time. Surprisingly, this one feature can save as much as 50 percent on a facility’s energy bill.

When it comes to cleaning, Green facilities must consider installing auto-dilution systems. These machines automatically dilute Green cleaning chemicals, which are normally concentrated, with water so that just enough is used to perform cleaning tasks properly, and more importantly, protect cleaners from fumes and control the amount of VOC’s released into the building. This is more cost effective and helps protect the user, building occupants, and the environment as well.