This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
REGULAR


FIFTY SHADES OF GREEN


In his third column looking at the ‘Green Debate’ that rumbles on in the cleaning industry, Max Adam, Sales & Marketing Director at RP Adam, continues to bust the common misconceptions surrounding sustainability in cleaning, explaining why it isn’t strictly beneficial to be ‘more’ green than your competitors.


Think of the purchasing manager working for a business with environmental considerations at the heart of their remit. The tender for cleaning chemicals is due to be sent out, and they are searching for reputable companies to participate. After trawling the web to draw up a list of possible participants, they take stock and ask themselves:


“Do we need a ‘green’ or ‘eco’ brand to clean our business outlets environmentally safely?”


Straight up, the answer is no!


Any business can clean perfectly safely without making special ‘feature’ choices or being tempted towards so- called ecological products. The EU (as one of the most regulated collection of countries in the world) already requires by law that ALL professional cleaning products are safe and do not harm people or the eco-system.


As we mentioned last month, choosing less hazardous or ‘greener’ ingredients might in principle widen the scope of user safety and environmental impact, but what if those ingredients are less effective? Then sustainability suffers. Purchasing managers just need to ask themselves the question – if commonly used chemicals (from reputable firms) are already acceptable both in terms of user safety and environmental impact, why would making them MORE acceptable be of any additional benefit?


32 | Tomorrow’s Cleaning November 2015


There are those in the professional chemicals industry who have been quick to exploit the B2B customer’s desire to ‘go green’, in some cases almost at any cost. What seems to be an altruistic approach simply boils down to an opportunity to exploit a feature without examining the real benefit. The chemical industry has over the years spun many mythical technical yarns, and some providers of green brands have been quite unscrupulous in their mission to set themselves apart from well established, reputable chemical companies, portraying themselves to have a greater ecological conscience.


One of the tactics used is to declare products as being ‘environmentally better’ because they avoid the use of various ingredients which they claim shouldn’t be used. In many cases these claims are not supported by scientific evidence, because if they were, the offending products would be taken off the market due to legislative requirements and all similar brands would be equally affected.


Manufacturers must ensure that any beneficial claims made address impacts that are relevant to the impact of the product concerned. Cleaning chemicals sold into the professional arena, such as catering outlets, hotels, laundries, hospitals, schools and offices, although used every-day and critical in terms of performance and results, account for only a very


small part of the total environmental impact of the cleaning process.


The best illustration of this relates to processes involving high temperatures and mechanical equipment that use lots of energy to do the cleaning. For example, in automatic dish washing, detergents and rinse additives are usually dosed at 0.25% and 0.025% with water (very high dilution rates), because the dishwasher and the hot water do most of the work.


Reputable chemical manufacturers today are designing cleaning products that are increasingly highly concentrated and diluted via controlled dispensing systems. In this way packaging and transport impacts are minimised. Buyers should want MORE in the bottle, not less.


The paradox for the user is that these products in concentrate form may potentially be more user and environmentally hazardous, but due to the use of controlled dosing systems, the diluted products in use will have very low environmental and H&S impacts and will limit waste considerably – this is the trade-off.


This brings us back to the chemical company that promotes green imagery and claims on a range of ‘green’, ready to use products. Everything about this proposition flies in the face of environmental responsibility and it is incredible


twitter.com/TomoCleaning


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80