How Green Cleaning Products Can Save You Money
Making and maintaining a healthy building and a healthy office environment through a combination of green cleaning products and green practices means going green in general. And creating a sustainable business will not only benefit the environment, but can also help owners reduce operating costs.
If employees are not getting sick, they are coming in to work and being productive, active contributors to your business. If they are staying healthy, they are also not using your insurance, and are therefore saving you money, says John Pletz, CEO of ServiceMaster Clean by Pletz, based in Crystal Lake, Illinois.
As Founding Chair of the Green Business Task Force, Pletz does regular assessments of businesses and grades them on categories such as recycling. He has seen that there are simple things a business can do to encourage and facilitate regular recycling, such as having recycling bins in the office and reusing paper that is only partially used to reduce paper costs.
Green Tips
Here are other tips to help businesses go green:
Encourage employees to turn off their CPUs and monitors each night and to turn off monitors anytime they are not in use.
Ask your janitorial staff to turn off lights as they complete the cleaning in each area.
Pay employees electronically and not with paper checks. Offer free direct deposit. This not only saves the trees but the green in your pocket book by eliminating the cost of ink and paper checks.
Stop faxing on unused copy paper. Use the paper out of your recycle bin. Print on the back of paper that has already been printed on and fax away.
Ask your janitorial staff to stop using traditional cleaning products and to only use green cleaning products. This is an easy way to go green for no additional cost.
Recycle all your ink cartridges, and have them refilled instead of buying new ones. Purchase recycled office items, when possible.
To conserve energy, set your thermostat to programmable, so that automatically turns it on and off at pre-specified times. Set it to 78 degrees in summer, 68 degrees in winter ' keep it a little colder so it will cost less and wear a sweater?
To save water, make sure you have no drips, use a water-conserving flush system such as a touchless sytem that is pre-metered.
Use motion detectors to turn lights on and off automatically and invest in skylights. Encourage employees to turn off lights when they are leaving a conference room, office, etc.
Replace heating and air conditioning filters frequently, or better off, have a service come and do it. Then you know it's actually going to happen.
Set up an incentive for employees who cycle to work.
Going green can benefit everyone. Why not try instituting at least some of these practices in your workplace today?
