Embrace Sustainable Cleaning Solutions for Your Office or Facility

It doesn’t matter what industry you operate within, every workplace requires some level of cleaning products to ensure health and safety. Small offices may have a closet full of cleaning supplies, while major warehouses regularly consume high volumes of cleaning solutions. 

However, choosing the wrong products can harm both the environment and potentially even employees. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) states that harsh cleaning products containing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) can affect the air quality inside a workplace and then contribute to outdoor smog formations as they are ventilated. 

All cleaning compounds are eventually released into the environment as they evaporate or are disposed of. It’s important for companies to increase their sustainability efforts, embrace sustainable practices, and it’s easy to begin by considering how they impact the people working in your office or facility. 

Are you ready to change your buying habits and protect both the environment and employees? As a sustainable company we encourage you to explore how relatively minor changes can have a major impact and lower your environmental footprint.

What Is Sustainable Cleaning? A Brief Introduction

Sustainable cleaning is a term that encompasses multiple activities that all aim to reduce or eliminate the impact of your cleaning routine on the environment. It’s no longer necessary to use heavy-duty chemicals to ensure that surfaces are properly cleaned and sterilized; sustainable cleaners are now just as effective. 

Even though it’s not strictly part of sustainable cleaning, embracing environmentally safe products tends to also create safer conditions for employees and the janitorial staff.  Research has shown that chemicals commonly found in traditional cleaning products can pose serious health risks to those regularly exposed to them. Everyone in the office or facility will be exposed at varying levels since cleaning products evaporate and impact internal air quality. Those using the harsh chemicals are most at risk of having their health affected.

Buying sustainable cleaning products and integrating sustainable practices in your business will help protect both the environment and your employees. New cleaners are now on the market that accomplish the same tasks as the harsh products many companies tend to rely on. 

It’s time to learn exactly how your business can do its part to protect both your employees and the environment.

How to Implement Sustainable Cleaning in Your Workplace

Your office space or facility needs to be cleaned and sterilized, it’s unavoidable. Yet, keeping your office clean doesn’t have to harm the environment and pose a hazard to employees. There’s a sustainable cleaning product available for nearly every use under the sun – it’s time to make the change.

Start by Replacing Products with Harsh Chemicals

Explore the world of safe cleaning products and you’ll quickly discover that you don’t even need harsh chemicals anymore. Safe and biodegradable cleaning products ranging from multi-purpose cleaners to air fresheners will accomplish the same goal as traditional products that contain harsh chemicals. 

You’ll likely end up saving money, too. An ideal sustainable cleaning product will be sold as a concentrate, which means a small amount of the product mixed with water will get the job done. Traditional cleaners are mostly water with active ingredients making up a small percentage of what’s in the bottle. 

By continually paying for bottles of water, you not only spend more every time you need to replenish your cleaning supply stock, but it also negatively impacts the environment and your communities by increasing supply chain requirements, which result in more gas emissions released by shipping trucks. Instead, start by investing in a gallon of concentrate and adopt environmentally-friendly practices.

Learn to Reuse and Repurpose Everything 

Studies have shown that a single plastic bottle will take 450 years or more just to break down into microplastics. Even at that stage it still harms the environment, typically affecting marine life. This creates an important reason to consider plastic free cleaning products in Canada.

Nobody expects you to abandon plastic altogether, but you can certainly reduce your plastic output by ditching single-use cleaning bottles. Replace those bottles with a reusable spray bottle that accomplishes the exact same purpose. Combined with the above advice about concentrates, you can maximize your cleaning budget while reducing your environmental impact at the same time. 

What else can you reuse? There are likely plenty of opportunities to repurpose items that would otherwise be sent to the landfill. You don’t even have to be the one reusing or repurposing these items, there might be local organizations or recycling programs that would benefit from your business’ waste.

Invest in Sustainable Cleaning Equipment

Sustainable cleaning equipment might represent more of an upfront expense, but it will immediately reduce your environmental impact and likely save money in the long run. Research has shown that investing in robotic floor care equipment reduces water pollution by 77%, energy usage by 97% and air pollution by 94%. 

You don’t necessarily need expensive purchases to invest in sustainable cleaning equipment. Consider the low price of a microfiber cloth that can continually be re-used as opposed to buying one-time use alternatives. 

Buying refillable cleaning products is another low-cost way to invest in sustainable cleaning equipment. A refillable hand sanitizer dispenser with a pump will keep employees sanitized without producing plastic to do so.

Stay Clean, Reduce Costs, and Help the Environment

Your office or facility needs to be cleaned and sterilized regularly. Doing so protects your employees and customers. However, you don’t need to use harsh chemicals and one-time-use plastics to do it. The days of environmentally conscious products not having the same efficacy as harsh chemicals are long gone, it’s time to switch. 

At Econo-Chem we offer a diverse line of sustainable cleaning products designed to address all of your cleaning needs in an affordable and environmentally-friendly way. As your trusted cleaning products supplier, we promote environmental sustainability by offering bulk cleaning solutions to reduce plastic waste and maximize your budget, while our reusable products replace the need for one-time-use plastics. 

Browse our environmentally-aware line of products today to see what changes you can make to protect the environment and your employees.