Green Cleaning: A Thirty-Year Perspective

As a long-time advocate for Green Cleaning in the professional cleaning industry, I've witnessed its remarkable evolution over the past three decades.

While our early efforts have proven invaluable, I've noticed that newcomers to our industry often lack awareness of Green Cleaning's origins and continued significance.

This knowledge gap concerns me because understanding Green Cleaning's history is crucial to appreciating its profound impact on our industry. Green Cleaning has transformed how we approach cleaning and protecting the health of custodial workers, building occupants, and the environment worldwide.

Green Cleaning has also achieved meaningful results across multiple areas, such as:

·       It has helped protect public health by creating healthier indoor environments.

·       Improved educational outcomes by keeping students in school.

·       Reduced workplace absenteeism.

·       Enhanced worker safety

·       Improved indoor air quality.

·       Reduced cleanings impact on the environment and advanced sustainability goals.

And perhaps most importantly, it has highlighted our industry's essential role in promoting public well-being.

To bridge this generational knowledge gap and preserve this vital history, The Ashkin Group will launch a series of educational articles on Green Cleaning. These will be available on my LinkedIn page and The Ashkin Group website. These posts will document the Green Cleaning movement's journey and its lasting impact on our industry.

Below is the first in that series:

The Legislative Origins of Green Cleaning  

In 1993, then-President Bill Clinton signed U.S. Executive Order 12873. This order laid the foundation for our industry's Green Cleaning journey.

It directed the U.S. Federal government to select environmentally preferable cleaning products whenever possible. Environmentally preferable cleaning products were defined as solutions and tools that have a "reduced impact on health and the environment compared to similar products and services used for the same purpose."

From this definition, we can define Green Cleaning as cleaning that protects health—both for the user of the product and building occupants—and the environment.

It's important to note that the executive order uses the term compared. The order does not suggest that traditional cleaning products are necessarily harmful. Instead, the order emphasizes and encourages the use and development of new products that perform well but with less impact on health and the environment.

The definition also suggests that when identifying environmentally preferable cleaning products, we must consider the product's entire life cycle, including but not limited to:

·       The raw material used to make the product.

·       The manufacturing process

·       Packaging and distribution of the product

·       Recycling and reuse

·       The disposal of the product.

Now we have the foundation for the Green Cleaning movement. In time, manufacturers put more funds and research into developing Green Cleaning products, distributors started marketing them, and end customers and in-house cleaning professionals began using them.

While these were crucial first steps, they were insufficient to spur the Green Cleaning movement. Additional developments were required for environmentally preferable cleaning solutions and practices to grow in demand and take over our industry. Our next article will cover these events. Stay tuned.