Recycling Tips for Your Office
Keeping an office eco-friendly is important, but can be hard to do. One option is to consider hiring green office cleaning services to keep your workplace clean and clutter-free. An office should also consider options such as recycling to become more eco-friendly.
Here are some recycling tips to keep your office eco-friendly:
- Recycle Miscellaneous Office Supplies: Ask your employees to put all of their old or unused office supplies, such as binders, folders, and pencil holders, in a common area accessible to other coworkers. Rather than throwing out these office supplies, other employees can reuse them. This will also be a great place for your employees to check office supplies inventory before ordering new items.
- Recycle Paper and Try to Go Paperless: It may not be possible to go completely paperless, but you can take steps to reduce the amount of paper used day-to-day. Encourage your employees to print on both sides of a page, and recycle paper instead of throwing it away. Set up recycle bins around the office and near printers. Additionally, encourage employees to save paper by using digital documents or email instead of printing copies.
- Recycle Batteries: Many things in and around your office require batteries to operate. Your employees may toss out the old batteries rather than recycling them. To prevent this, set up special recycling bins to collect old batteries.
- Recycle Bottles and Glass: Make sure break rooms, lunch areas, and other common areas have bins for recycling glass and bottles so that your employees can recycle them after eating.
- Recycle Electronics, Computers, and Computer Accessories: Electronics and computer accessories can pile up, especially if you just updated your office technology. Schedule a monthly or quarterly “electronics recycling day” to remove and recycle these items.
Conduct a waste audit regularly if you want to know the eco-friendliness of your office. This will help you gain a better understanding of what materials are trashed and if any of those can be recycled instead.
Contact us today to create an affordable cleaning service for your business. Our green cleaning services ensure a healthy and eco-friendly working environment for you and your employees.
Green Medical Office Cleaning Service: Everything You Need to Know
Green cleaning refers to using cleaning products and methods that are environment-friendly and specifically designed to protect environmental quality and human health. More medical facilities are switching to green cleaning services because of its exceptional benefits.
Read more to learn about the challenges and benefits of green cleaning for medical facilities.
Medical Facilities’ Green Cleaning Challenges
Cost and performance are the two green cleaning challenges for medical facilities.
- Performance: Green cleaning products are non-harmful and non-toxic, so people assume that these products cannot handle the dangerous gems found in medical facilities. However, there are many green cleaning products and disinfectants that are specifically designed for medical facilities. Those products can be used to achieve healthier workspace.
- Cost: Green cleaning can be more expensive than standard cleaning, but it creates a healthier workspace and improves employees’ productivity and wellness, which could outweigh its cost. Green cleaning in medical facilities will lower patients’ and staffs’ exposure to the health hazards resulting from infections, gems, and other chemicals.
Different Ways to Make Your Medical Office Cleaning Service Greener
Here are some ways that you can consider for creating a healthier and greener workspace for your patients and staff:
- You can use green cleaning products in the areas and works where they can be effective and reasonable. Make sure you use certified green cleaning products.
- Try to minimize the use of volatile, toxic or caustic products in your medical facility. Consider using microfiber cleaning products, which will destroy bacteria and gems from hard floors, reducing the use of chemical cleaning products.
- Make sure to find a medical office cleaning service that cleans the most space with minimum usage of cleaning products. This will reduce the number of cleaning products used in your medical facility and the exposure levels for your patients and staff.
What Are the Benefits of Green Cleaning in Medical Facilities?
Benefits of green cleaning for medical facilities include:
- Environmental-Friendly: Green cleaning products are friendly and healthy for the environment because they use recyclable packaging and biodegradable ingredients. These things will have a lower carbon footprint than standard cleaning products and practices.
- Minimize Health Hazards: Being exposed to toxic chemicals can cause many health problems. However, green cleaning products are non-toxic, so it won’t lead to serious health conditions such as asthma, allergy, or skin problems.
- Cost-Effective: The increased competition for green cleaning products lowers their costs. Therefore, you can save a considerable amount of money that you would normally spend on traditional cleaning products.
- Safe for the Housekeeping Staff: The cleaning staff can be easily and frequently exposed to chemical ingredients and toxic elements. This can cause health problems such as neurological impairments, cancer, and reproductive defects. However, green cleaning products minimize these risks because they are non-harmful to humans.
- Prevents Infection: The green cleaning products such as microfiber cleaning materials destroy 99% bacteria and gems more than traditional cleaning products and methods.
Contact us today to request a free quote and if you want to learn more about our green cleaning services for medical facilities.
Simple Steps to Keep Your Office Green and Clean
Going green was once thought of as an innovative business practice. Now, it’s the expectation; but many businesses are not exactly aware of where to start implementing green ideas.
Here is a simple guide to getting started on making your office a little greener:
- Adopt Renewable Energy: Green power sources like solar and wind energy are more accessible than ever, with alternatives including rooftop solar fittings and extensive wind farms. Organizations of any magnitude can make this shift.
- Make The Most of Natural Light: Depending on natural light as much as possible conserves energy and saves your consumption costs. Also consider fitting a smart power strip at each workstation, substituting all lighting equipment with LEDs, as well as including sensors and timers for workplace lighting.
- Encourage Green Commuting: Organizations can support employees who choose to reduce traveling emissions by walking, biking, carpooling, or public transit for commuting to and from the office, and give incentives for doing so. Providing work-from-home options can also decrease your organization's carbon footprint.
- Manage Waste Effectively: If your office lacks a recycling bin, it's time to present one. Guide your teammates to distinguish waste into heads like paper, plastic, glass, recyclables, and food scraps. This step will help to minimize the quantity of waste from your office reaching a landfill.
- Clean Office HVAC System: One primary, but frequently overlooked step, is to check for leaks in the vents of your HVAC systems and clean them regularly. Getting professional help from a janitorial service company for vacuuming or washing off your HVAC System will prevent dust from accumulating.
- Clean Green: A lot of businesses forget to go green when it comes to cleaning their office. But cleaning supplies and materials can have a significant impact on the environment. Choosing green cleaning products and materials, or choosing a cleaning service that uses those products, is a tangible, immediate practice you can implement today.
- Every Watt Counts: It may seem trivial, but turning off unnecessary lights can lower your carbon footprint significantly. Try turning off half your lights or installing lights triggered by motion detectors in places like the mailroom or the bathroom.
- Go Paperless: Technology has now made it possible for businesses of all types to reduce the amount of paper used in their day-to-day operations. And yet, you still probably use more paper than necessary. Using document sharing technology, sending emails instead of memos and projecting meeting documents on a document camera or projector can reduce your paper use. As a side benefit, you'll save on toner as well.
- Plant a Tree: Placing a potted plant or two in the office premises can go a long way in enhancing your business prospects. Indoor plants not only improve the air quality inside your office but also make the place look more attractive, as well as increase the productivity of your staff.
- Ban the Bottle: Plastic water bottles have become the bane of the landfill. These bottles show up everywhere and don't easily decompose. Instead of using bottled water at your meetings or for your staff room, install a high-quality water filter and invest in some pitchers and reusable cups.
Going green at your business is easier than you think; you can start today with these quick and easy steps mentioned here. You can hire professional office cleaning services to help you with your goal of going green at your business. Contact us at (949) 358-6891 to learn more about how to keep an eco-friendly office space or to schedule a complimentary assessment of your commercial space.
4 Key Benefits of Commercial Green Cleaning
Green cleaning is trending everywhere nowadays. If you are interested as to how your businesses can benefit from green commercial cleaning services, rest assured that your property will be immaculately cleaned, in a safe and effective way.
But what contributes to its popularity and how can you ensure your cleaning products and techniques are “green”? Hiring a green cleaning service provider or green maintenance provider plays a key role in maintaining an environmentally sound commercial space.
What Constitutes Green Cleaning? Green cleaning is the integrated approach to cleaning that involves equipment, products, and regulations, with the single aim of minimizing unfavorable impacts on health and the surroundings. This yields highly effective cleaning outcomes for your commercial property. Bearing this fact in mind
Here are 4 key benefits of commercial green cleaning your property.
- Protects Building Occupant Health: Green cleaning equipment and methods employ fewer chemicals in general and have restrictions on harmful chemicals known as carcinogens, teratogens, neurotoxins, hormone disruptors, and more. Certified green products are cautiously managed to minimize their corrosive nature, inhalation toxicity, combustibility, and skin absorption. They are less annoying to the skin, eyes, and respiratory system, and have less related health risks.
- Enhances Indoor Air Quality: Conventional cleaning products emit harmful Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) that are known to reduce the indoor air quality. This causes certain short and long-term harmful health effects like respiratory problems, allergies, headaches, etc. Indoor air quality can severely impact employee well-being and productivity. commercial Green cleaning doesn’t involve any type of harmful chemicals and does not cause indoor air pollution.
- Provides Extended Return on Investment (ROI): Healthy, environmentally-friendly options for cleaning may appear to be costlier now, but their ROI in the long-term can’t be overlooked. Green cleaning proves to be cost-effective in the long run because:
- It enhances employee productivity and attendance of building occupants.
- It minimizes costly ventilation solutions needed to repair bad indoor air quality damage.
- It employs less damaging chemicals than traditional products and methods, improving the durability of flooring, furniture, building exteriors, etc.
- It's gradually becoming more affordable with emerging ranges of options.
- Boosts Environmental Sustainability: Dangerous, non-biodegradable chemicals from conventional cleaning systems find their way into the soil, water, and air. These chemicals are also packed into non-recyclable containers. All these components release unsafe elements into the environment like phosphates or alkylphenol ethoxylates (APEs).On the other hand, being an eco-friendly alternative, green cleaning supports the environment. They are safely disposable to reduce the pollutants entering the commercial premises. They are created from sustainable, biodegradable, and non-toxic substances, with packaging that doesn't produce unnecessary waste.
Tips for Commercial Green Cleaning
Commercial green cleaning hugely contributes towards maintaining the standards of green commercial spaces, but it’s more applicable than merely office buildings. Commercial green cleaning and maintenance is a wise option anywhere, including educational institutions.
Check out these six commercial green cleaning tips:
- Avoid Potentially Dangerous Sprays - Avoid products like air fresheners and cloth protection sprays because they contain harmful chemicals linked to potential health problems in the endocrine system such as reproductive disorders.
- Treating Carpet Is Not Recommended - Refrain from using carpet cleaning and stain-resistant products that make your office susceptible to dangerous chemicals. Instead, you should trust a steam cleaner.
- Beware of Old Furniture - Recently, laws have been made to eliminate Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDE’s) from the furniture market because they act as fire retardants and disintegrate into harmful metabolites linked to cancer. Keep away from using PBDE furniture.
- Replace Cleaners with Smart DIY Tricks - You can use many standard household supplies such as lemon, cooking oil, baking soda, and vinegar to make your DIY cleaners for surfaces and tough odors.
- Carefully Study Cleaning Product Labels - Although only 7% of cleaning products satisfactorily disclose their ingredients list, a few do reveal harmful chemicals on the bottle. Make sure to stay away from cleaning products that contain dangerous chemicals including phthalates, formaldehyde, and chemical surfactants.
- Hire LEED-Certified Cleaners - Professional cleaning service that maintains your commercial property must be LEED certified. The US Green Building Council awards LEED certification to the deserving facility management teams that actively employ best green cleaning practices in their service offerings.
Why Schools Should Go for Green Cleaning
Everyday almost 60 million students and staff attend schools representing 20 percent of America's overall population. Keeping the schools clean and reducing air pollutants is critical for protecting them from exposure to harmful substances. A green cleaning program will help the students and staff stay healthy. A green school environment is helpful in improving children's learning and well-being.
A well-designed and planned green cleaning initiative will help in the following ways:
- Save money
- Preserve environment
- Increase the lifespan of the facilities
- Improve everyone’s health
- Increase everyone’s lifespan
Schools should follow green cleaning as it offers the following major benefits:
Beneficial for Students: Children suffer from problems such as asthma due to poor air quality. If the air quality gets improved, these problems will cease to exist. It will provide children better health and they will be able to focus more towards studies and other important activities such as exercise.
Protects Custodial Staff: Every year 6% of the custodians get injured on the job due to chemical exposures. Custodial staffs are prone to health problems due to exposure to unsafe environment and toxic cleaning chemicals. Green chemicals will reduce the risk of falling sick and injuries.
Environment Preservation: A green cleaning initiative will make a bigger impact in environment preservation. If all the schools in the US start using energy-efficient cleaning equipment, it is estimated that 23 million tons of carbon emission will be saved.
Saves Money: There will be considerable money savings as most of the green chemicals in the market are reasonably priced when compared to traditional chemicals for cleaning purposes. It will save money which can be used for some other important purpose such as improving the meal plans.
A green cleaning initiative in the schools will provide a healthy environment for the children to play and learn!
Momentum Janitorial is a leading commercial cleaning services provider in Irvine, California. We use green chemicals for cleaning schools. For more information about our services, call us at (949) 358-6891.