A sustainable future
British Cleaning Council (BCC) members play a key role in promoting sustainability, says Chairman Jim Melvin.
Over the past few years, the cleaning and hygiene industry has made significant strides in terms of sustainability.
As one of the 10 biggest industries in the UK, worth £58.9bn to the nation’s economy, the cleaning, hygiene, and waste industry
clearly has the potential to help the UK achieve its climate change and environmental goals.
The industry is developing a huge range of sustainable initiatives, innovations, and best practice such as developing cleaning chemicals that don’t damage the environment, less chemical usage in general, and working on removing single use plastics in products.
Yet there is more we can do. Across the industry, initiatives such as committing to zero waste to landfill, cutting back emissions from vehicles, and ensuring environmental awareness is a top priority throughout all need to be mainstreamed.
The truth is that sustainability remains one of the biggest and most complicated issues facing our sector. It can be hard for businesses to make the right choices for the environment while there are immediate, pressing concerns such as commercial considerations or significant staff shortages.
BCC members are playing an important role in moving the industry and the country forward in this area.
Our colleagues at the Cleaning and Hygiene Suppliers Association (CHSA) recently launched the Roadmap to Sustainability to give members and the wider industry practical help and the insights and information needed to move in the right direction.
The roadmap offers value by: •
•
Informing and educating members on the sustainability agenda and associated issues.
Providing members with a strategic way forward for developing their approach to sustainability.
• Helping the membership align on sustainability and so drive the industry forward.
It has been built on the five key pillars of product, packaging, transportation, social values and corporate and environmental impact.
The CHSA launched the roadmap with a webinar on the issue at the end of June. It has compiled a directory of useful contacts and is producing a number of fact sheets. Find out more at the CHSA’s website.
Our colleagues at Keep Britain Tidy do a huge amount of work to protect the environment through initiatives
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such as the Great British Spring Clean, as part of which participants pledged to collect nearly half a million bags of litter this year.
The Textile Services Association (TSA) is putting together a Sustainability Pact that’s designed to support commercial laundries in their drive to deliver a more sustainable future.
Another BCC member, the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management (CIWM) is the leading professional membership organisation for individuals in the sustainability, resources, and waste management sector. It is dedicated to moving the world beyond waste.
Altogether, it is clear that BCC members are having a major impact in this area.
On another note, I wanted to update you on our requests for a meeting with Government to discuss the Sue Gray report, which highlighted the lack of respect and poor treatment of cleaning staff at Number 10 during ‘partygate’.
We twice asked to meet Cabinet Secretary Simon Case to review the allegations with Government and discuss the steps that have been taken to deal with them. We wanted to be sure that this disgraceful scandal had been properly resolved and we need reassurances that the culture around cleaning and security staff in Government has been reset and will be correct in the future.
However, we have received no substantial response. We can only assume that the ministerial statements and apologies over the way cleaning staff were treated were merely unworthy PR rhetoric. We’re extremely frustrated and disappointed by the lack of action from this government.
As always, we are determined to continue to try to engage with them on behalf of the industry and we won’t stop until they finally hear what we have to say.
www.britishcleaningcouncil.org (
www.chsa.co.uk)
twitter.com/TomoCleaning
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