Microfiber - additional benefits

In addition to the green credentials and superior productivity, microfiber has at least one additional advantage ...................

.......... ergonomics - those of you that have mopped large expanses of tile floor with string mops know that that operation is a "young man's game' - tough on the back and very tiring. The microfiber mops are lower weight (less water used) and configured like a dustmop so you just push it - you don't have to do all the lifting and swinging that string mops require. A half hour of micro fiber mopping will save you an hour and a half of hard work - huge.

And - anytime you have an ergonomic advantage in the janitorial business there will eventually be hard dollar savings on injuries, workers comp, absenteeism, turnover, training, etc.

Bob

How to choose Entry Mats for your building

It's that time of year here in the great frozen north - snow, rain and ice (and salt and sand on the ice) are about to reappear in our commercial cleaning customers' facilities.

Here's another article about properly matting your facility to minimize damage to your carpets and vinyl tile, and to minimize the need for restorative carpet cleaning.

A couple of important points:

A) "most buildings are undermatted" - you need 3 or 4 steps on a mat to properly clean sand, salt and moisture from your shoes. More if you are using only fabric rental mats (ineffective for sand and salt - useful only for moisture). Plastic scrubber mats before the fabric rental mats are essential to remove particulates like ice, snow, salt, sand and mud.

B) Frequent vacuuming and even having additional mats you can change out midday if the conditions are such that the mat becomes completely saturated are going to make a huge difference. Sometime watch people walking over a saturated mat - all you are doing is exchanging one persons wet footprints for someone else's once they are saturated.

By isolating the soil to the entry this way you avoid tracking it around the building, and among other things make life easy for the janitors.

Matting Article

The website is for all issues of the magazine - drill down to April, 2010, page 40, Facilities Focus to find the article.

Bob

Green Cleaning - non certified products

Some of the commercial cleaning products we use are certifiable as green - vacuum cleaners, extractors, chemicals, and so on.

Some are not - mops, buckets, disinfectants (tho this should come thru soon) and so on.

However, green principles can still be applied to these products.

For instance, our microfiber mopping protocols are not per se green, but the lower chemical use they make possible contributes to a "greener" overall cleaning program.

That they last much longer than string mops means less waste in the landfill, also a "green" outcome.

(I'll pass on the energy consumed in laundering them, and I have no idea whether string mops or microfiber mops are the more green to manufacture. I suspect microfiber - the amount of water, petrochemicals and energy used in growing cotton for string mops is staggering - even compared to microfiber which is itself a petroleum product.)

Here's a link to an article (written by one of the 200 or so certifying agencies) pointing out how to look at "greenness" in the non green certified elements of our product / service.

Certification

Pretty much every janitorial supply vendor has legitimate "green" products now - but some are "more legitimate" than others.

Bob

Green Cleaning - Multiple Certifying Entities

Quoting From Cleaning Management Magazine, "worldwide, over 200 (repeat 200) companies, organizations and groups offer third party green cleaning certification ........"

Including :

CIMS - ISSA's Cleaning Industry Management Standard

Green Seal Inc.

USGBC - the US Green Building Council

USEPA - the EPA's "Design for the Environment"

GEI - Greenguard Environmental Institute

CRI - The Carpet and Rug Institute's Seal of Approval program.

(and 194 plus others - too numerous to mention)

We're currently standardized on vacuums that are CRI certified and I've talked at length in other posts about the "greenness" of the commercial cleaning chemicals and procedures our janitors use.

Bob

Hepa Filters - when to change them.

We are standardized on hepa filter vacuums for all our new commercial cleaning customers.

Filters need to be changed periodically.

Cleaning Management just published an article of how frequently these need to be changed.

(Not having read the manual that comes with the vacuums - I'm a guy after all - the question had never occurred to me.)

Their recommendations are :

Commercial cleaning applications : check ever 6 months - change if unusually soiled, else change once per year regardless.

Residential cleaning : Every 2 - 3 years.

Pre - filter : Clean or change every 3 months (if the model you are using has a pre - filter)

If it's a carbon pre filter : Every 2 - 3 years.

Obviously if a janitor is running the equipment 4 or 5 hours a nite 5 nites per week you want to check the filters more often than this.

Bob

How to avoid bedbugs - travel protocol

Here's a Washington Post article published last week on appropriate travel precautions.

Apparently I live in one of the "15 Bed - buggiest" cities in America, but since I don't patronize the local hotels it's ok to shake my hand.

Post Article

My volunteer gig is a non profit called "Bridging" which redistributes used furniture to folks getting their first apartment. While I haven't met him, we apparently just bought or contracted for a bedbug sniffing dog.

Bob

Bedbugs

Bedbugs really are not a " janitor " problem - but somebody asked me about using ozone generators to kill bed bugs. Limited web search indicates that it isn't penetrative enough of the places where they hang out to kill them.

Bedbugger.com is a website devoted to all things bedbuggy. Happy reading. ( What a country !)

Bob