Green Cleaning in Schools
Each school day, some 53 million students and 5 million staff attend our nation's schools, representing some 20 percent of the American population. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), half this population may be exposed to polluted indoor air, lead, asbestos, chemical fumes, pesticides, molds, and other toxins, along with overcrowding and poor sanitation.
A well-designed green cleaning program can help reduce these harmful exposures and yield many other positive benefits for students, custodial staff, administrators, and the environment.
1. Green Cleaning Helps Students Stay Healthy and Learn
Research shows a clear link between poor indoor air quality, sick students and teachers, and poor academic and occupational performance. Furthermore, children miss more than 14 million school days each year due to asthma exacerbated by poor indoor air quality, which disproportionately affects low-income and minority students. Green cleaning can help reduce the environmental hazards that negatively affect children's growing, developing bodies.
2. Green Cleaning Protects the Health of Custodial Staff
Members of the custodial staff, especially women of child-bearing age, are particularly susceptible to health problems caused by their frequent and close interaction with cleaning chemicals and equipment. Choosing safer products and training staff in proper usage can help reduce the number of injuries caused by caustic chemicals, respiratory irritation and dangerous equipment, decrease Workers' Compensation claims, and lower insurance costs.
3. Green Cleaning Increases the Lifespan of Facilities
Proper maintenance extends the longevity and performance of school building materials and furnishings by preventing damage and premature aging, which, in turn, reduces waste and unnecessary spending.
For example, school districts allocate a significant amount of money to carpeting, which is expected to have a useful life of 10 to 15 years. A square foot of typical carpet can hide as much as three times its weight in dirt and sand, which act like thousands of small knives, cutting and wearing out fibers in a few short years, long before its useful lifespan and before the school had budgeted to replace it.
4. Green Cleaning Preserves the Environment
Traditional cleaning products can contain harmful chemicals. Depending on the duration, rate, and extent of exposure, they can cause cancer, reproductive disorders, major organ damage, and permanent eye damage. These cleaning chemicals are also routinely washed down the drain where they find their way into drinking water, lakes, and streams, adversely affecting plant and animal life, threatening public health, and adding to pollution.
The cleaning industry consumes six billion pounds of chemicals, including non-renewable natural resources such as petroleum, and generates 4.5 billion pounds of paper products requiring the cutting of 35 million trees annually. Buying recycled paper and plastic products can help conserve precious natural resources for future generations.
Schools have been cleaned the same way for so long that most of us haven't really given it much thought. Starting a green cleaning program can feel overwhelming, but green cleaning is not an "all or nothing" proposition. Most schools that successfully implement green cleaning programs begin by addressing the most significant or easily accessible issues. As they experience success, they add new elements to their plan or make adjustments to improve the results of current efforts.
You can get the process started with just five simple steps:
Step 1: Switch to Green Cleaning Products
Purchase certified green cleaning products. There are dozens of choices that work well and are cost-competitive compared to traditional products. This stage also includes training or retraining cleaning personnel regarding the proper product application, mixing, dilution, and disposal.
Step 2: Introduce Green Equipment and Supplies
Use vacuums and other floor cleaning equipment with high-efficiency filters to capture microscopic materials that might adversely impact building occupant health or damage sensitive equipment. Green equipment tends to cost more, but the higher quality and greater durability is more cost-effective in the long run.
Step 3: Adopt Green Cleaning Procedures
Change the frequency, technique, or time when cleaning is performed. For instance, spray product on a cleaning cloth rather than on the surface being cleaned, or adopt integrated pest management to cut down on pesticide exposure.
Step 4: Use Green Paper and Plastic Products
Introduce environmentally preferable paper and recycled plastic trash can liners to your school. By taking a few simple steps to reduce consumption (such as replacing multifold hand towels with large rolls and replacing single-roll toilet paper dispensers with dispensers that hold multiple rolls), you can offset the higher initial cost.
Step 5: Share the Responsibility
Educate custodial staff, administrators, teachers, students, union representatives, vendors, and visitors about what they can do to promote a healthy school environment, such as recycling paper and plastic, conserving water, maintaining uncluttered classrooms and workspaces, and handling food and potential contaminants properly.
This article is courtesy of Healthy Schools Campaign, an independent not-for-profit organization, www.healthyschoolscampaign.org.
