Chemical Free Cleaning Trending In Commercial Sector

"Chemical-free" cleaning is something of a trend in the commercial sector, but expense and effectiveness doubts mean it's not catching on in homes.

'Chemical-free' cleaning is trending in the commercial sector (Debbi McCullough is an independent writer): Will greener cleaning methods, such as salt-based split stream water technology, replace conventional powders and bleaches?

Randy Reed, deputy assistant director of housekeeping at North Carolina State University, North Carolina’s largest campus, often fretted about the effects of chemicals on the 300 housekeepers as they cleaned. While nobody was ever seriously injured, he fielded several reports of rashes, occasional respiratory problems and headaches, possibly caused by exposure to the harsh smells the cleaners omitted.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a government agency, warns of this in its public safety warnings (pdf). Cleaning chemicals, OSHA states, can cause dangerous gases causing headaches, dizziness, wheezing, even lung damage. With this in mind, two years ago, Reed replaced traditional industrial cleaners such as Diversey Glance and Comet Cleaner with Orbio SC 5000 split stream water technology to clean floors, surfaces, even urinals.

This new system uses a salt-based, chemical-free process, where water passes through the system giving it an electrical charge. The solution cleans and sanitizes surfaces leaving it 99% germ free, Reed explains. “On our first trial our hygiene meter monitored the bacteria count on a urinal and found the technology removed as many germs as a regular sanitizer."

Orbio SC 5000 uses a salt-based process, where water passes through the system giving it an electrical charge.

NC State is part of a larger trend in which universities, retailers, sports facilities and large corporations are not just cleaning with greener chemicals, but without chemicals at all.

Companies including Coca-Cola Enterprises in the Netherlands; ISS, one of the world’s largest commercial facilities services providers; and Chapman University, (pdf) one of California’s oldest private universities, have made the switch. Examples include sanitizing facilities with technologies such as steam vapor systems, spray and vac systems using pressurized water to remove and loosen soils along with ozonated and electrolyzed systems using electricity to turn water into a cleaning agent. The use of microfiber cloths and mops, which require only water to remove germs, grime and bacteria also make up the trend.

While industry numbers don’t yet exist, Stephen Ashkin, executive director of The Green Cleaning Network, a non-profit working with corporations to green the cleaning industry, estimates that, based on his client research and surveys, 30% to 50% of corporations and institutions across the US, now clean their facilities with eco-friendly chemical cleaners or cleaners without chemicals at all.

“The professional cleaning industry has changed,” he says. “The newer trend experts are seeing is cleaning without chemicals.” Ashkin believes cleaning products minimizing chemicals will never replace floor finishes, heavy-duty cleaning chemicals or graffiti removers, but this is a “tool in the toolbox for creating a healthy and clean environment while leaving a minimal footprint.”

Defining Chemical-Free Cleaning

The trend is so new that even the description of these products is controversial; while some call them chemical-free, others say eco-friendly. Ashkin rejects the term “chemical-free” cleaning because no cleaning product or device completely avoids chemicals.

“Chemical-free cleaning is a marketing term versus a technical term,” he says. Case in point is companies offering chemical-free cleaning products, such as Tennant, maker of the Orbio systems, which use their own technologies to define "chemical-free."

OSHA defines green cleaning as products certified by independent organizations as safe to use and less harmful to your health and environment than conventional alternatives such as bleach and ammonia.

Wherever the definition lies, all this means good business for the big players. In April, Tennant posted quarterly results showing growth year-on-year. Other brands including Tursano, maker of the popular Lotus Pro device (similar to the split stream water technology), and the larger company Ecolab also reported positive first-quarter earnings. Makers of chemical free antibacterial microfiber cloths have good customer following as well. Norway-based Norwex, now in multiple markets including Canada, Australia and the US, sells microfiber towels and cloths, microfiber scarf clips for cleaning tablets, glasses and jewellery (instead of toxic sprays and wipes) and dry polyester floor pads for mopping.

But much of this market is in the commercial sector. Based on his client work, Ashkin estimates that residential cleaning remains only around 1-5% of the core eco-friendly and chemical-free cleaning market, probably because the conversion payback is higher for large corporations. Purchasing a chemical-free cleaning device for a commercial space can cost up to $5,000, a worthwhile investment, if used daily. A Lotus Pro split stream water technology cleaning device for your home averages $150 retail, too much for a parent worried about putting food on the table, Ashkin adds. Commercial facilities also have employees to compare costs, and review and analyze the cleaning products they buy, which the household consumer often lacks.

Homemade Chemical Free Cleaning

Another growing trend is Americans making their own cleaning products, with limited chemicals. Senior account supervisor at MMI Public Relations in North Carolina, Jennifer Fair ditched Clorox and other harsh cleaners for recipes she found on Pinterest such as pairing vinegar with baking soda. The vinegar dish soap concoction gets her shower super clean, she says. Other recipes suggest using baking soda, sprayed with water, to clean ovens.

This interest is valid given the Environmental Working Group, a non-profit group, has found through their Hall of Shame (pdf) study that 438 of 2,000 assessed cleaning products contain at least one chemical that the non-profit group Association of Occupational and Environmental Clinics identifies as an asthmagen.

The worst offenders, the study claims, were those labelled as “green cleaners” such as the Simple Green Concentrated All-Purpose Cleaner (labelled as non-toxic and biodegradable) when one of its ingredients is 2-butoxyethanol, a solvent which can cause red blood cell damage and eye irritation. EWG also cites several studies showing pregnant women are more at risk for birth defects when exposed frequently to cleaning chemicals, especially window cleaner and air deodorizer sprays.

Effectiveness of greener cleaning products

Ashkin doesn’t believe home cleaning product recipes work well. “We have a romanticized view that because we can eat it, it’s good for you,” he says.

And can we say split stream chemical-free technologies clean as well as eco-friendly chemicals? Tennant doesn't know the answer to this question, and Ashkin says it’s too early to know. However, companies are evaluating the technologies, comparing the impact to chemicals and other devices along with the wattage. He suspects the environmental benefits of chemical-free cleaning devices and technology will outshine chemical cleaners.

“Conventional cleaning requires extracting the raw materials, turning these into ingredients, shipping to a formulator who mixes everything into an effective cleaning product before putting the chemicals into packaging (with their own environmental impacts) and finally shipping to the end user. Through green cleaning those impacts go away.”

Trending Bird Safety Glass Becoming Mandatory

This image provided by the American Bird Conservancy shows the new Visitors Center at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, which was designed with birds in mind. The special, striped pattern incorporated into the glass looks elegant, but also provides a signal to birds that a barrier exists.

Some cities adopting bird-friendly building rules (OAKLAND, Calif.)  – Birds and buildings can be a fatal combination. The American Bird Conservancy cites studies estimating that hundreds of millions of birds die each year as a result of colliding with walls and windows. But a movement to make skies a little friendlier is taking flight; some cities and other governments across the country are adopting bird-safety building guidelines on a mandatory or voluntary basis.

One of the latest cities to incorporate bird safety into housing regulations is Oakland, where officials this year revised guidelines originally approved in 2008 to make them more effective. Neighboring San Francisco adopted bird-friendly requirements in 2011, working with the American Bird Conservancy and Golden Gate Audubon Society, and the state of Minnesota also has bird-friendly design requirements, modeled after a LEED (Leadership in Engineering and Environmental Design) bird collision reduction program. The Minnesota requirements are part of a sustainability program that applies to projects with any state funding.

The state of California includes voluntary bird-friendly measures as an appendix to its green building code, known as CALgreen. What exactly do bird-safety regulations entail? A big issue is glass. Just as many a human has taken a nasty smack walking into a clear glass door, birds often come to grief when confronted with transparent picture windows or glass-sided buildings. Unlike humans, birds don’t pick up on architectural cues; they don’t see a window frame and realize it implies a window.

But that doesn’t mean that bird-friendly buildings have to be “windowless warehouses,” says Christine Sheppard, bird collisions campaign manager at the American Bird Conservancy. Glazing treatments, such as making glass opaque or using etching to make it more noticeable,can deter collisions. And research is being conducted into the efficacy of glass patterned with vertical or horizontal lines. “We’ve actually done quite a bit of this sort of testing, building on the work of Dr. Dan Klem at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania and Martin Roessler in Austria,” says Sheppard. “We know that there are highly effective patterns that cover less than 10 per cent of the glass surface. We know the basic dimensions of spaces birds won’t try to fly through, but we still need to determine the minimum size of the elements that create the spaces — lines can be broken up, patterns can be made of dots, lines don’t have to be straight, etc.”

From a design perspective, incorporating bird safety can be challenging, says Ryan Hughes, project manager at Lundberg Design in San Francisco. Clients want views, especially in a city like San Francisco blessed with hills overlooking a big, blue bay. And glass provides those views, whether that’s a floor-to-ceiling wall or a barrier around the edge of a terrace.

This publicity photo provided by American Bird Conservancy shows a bird-friendly design at the School of Pharmacy at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. A movement to make skies a little friendlier is taking flight; some cities and other governments across the country are adopting bird-safety building guidelines on a mandatory or voluntary basis.

Still, new glass products, including the type with minimal lines, can be part of an acceptable compromise. And sometimes, what’s good for humans is also good for birds: Lundberg designed glass bus shelters for the city of San Francisco that included a subtle pattern on the glass — called SF fog because it is denser at the bottom and dissipates at the top — to keep people from walking into the walls. Hughes said he later heard from bird safety officials that the pattern is effective at warding off birds, too.

The problem of bird collision isn’t limited to public structures or skyscrapers. “The estimate is that pretty much any home probably kills between one and 10 birds a year,” says Sheppard, author of the bird conservancy’s “Bird-Friendly Design.”(That figure is based on work by Klem, as well as by Scott Loss at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.) Making your home a more bird-friendly place can be as simple as sticking Post-It notes on the windows during high danger times, such as spring or fall bird migrations. Other relatively simple options that benefit birds and humans are window screens or shutters.

Oakland’s bird safety measures are part of the building permit process and apply to all construction projects that include glass as part of a building’s exterior. They also apply to projects that meet one of several criteria, including being next to places where birds are likely to congregate, such as a large body of water or a recreation area. Scott Miller, Oakland’s zoning manager, says he hasn’t heard many complaints from developers. The rules, he says, are “really quite reasonable. They’re not restricting development in such a way that would be objectionable. They’re just providing measures that make buildings friendlier to birds.”

Measures include bird-friendly glazing treatments; avoiding the use of mirrors in landscape design; and avoiding putting things that attract birds near glass. Other bird-friendly practices include turning off more lights at night, since lit windows can attract night-flying birds. Minimum-intensity white strobe lighting with a three-second flash is better than solid red or rotating lights, which attract birds. Taking steps to keep birds safe is more than just kindness, says Sheppard. Birds have an ecological impact dispersing seeds and eating harmful insects. “People should care about birds,” says Sheppard, “because we need birds.”

The pigeon crashed in to a kitchen pane in Dunblane, Stirling, leaving an outline that showed the pigeons head, torso and outspread wings. The imprint left then was said to be from the animal’s protective ‘powder down’ substance designed to preserve its feathers.

Bird Strike: deaths caused by collisions with buildings severely dent populations: Ben Whitford reveals why numerous birds fall dead and injured from the skies over urban areas each year, and asks what can be done to prevent this ongoing avian tragedy. On a brisk May morning in 2001, countless dying birds fell like rain from the grey Toronto sky. In the east of the city, outside a hulking 18-storey office complex called Consilium Place, workers on cigarette breaks watched in horror as tiny feathered bodies thudded onto the pavement, fell into their laps, and crashed onto the picnic tables where they had laid out their coffee and morning snacks.

While the office workers sought shelter, a bird enthusiast named Michael Mesure called for backup. As founder of the Fatal Light Awareness Program, or FLAP, Mesure runs a team of volunteers who patrol Toronto in search of birds that have stunned themselves — or worse — by flying into one of the city’s many mirrored-glass skyscrapers. Some mornings Mesure’s team doesn’t find many birds: perhaps just one, or two, or twenty.

In the space of six hours on that May morning, though, Mesure and a dozen or so volunteers found at least 500 birds. Ruby-throated hummingbirds, dark-eyed juncos, white-throated sparrows and Nashville warblers were carefully collected: the tiny corpses stored in plastic bags, the injured survivors placed gently in paper sacks for treatment and subsequent release. And still the birds kept falling. “It was literally hailing birds,” Mesure says. “It was just a real sobering moment for us.”

On a smaller scale, experts say, such scenes are repeated daily across North America as birds, unable to distinguish between blue sky and what Vladimir Nabokov poetically called “the false azure in the windowpane”, careen into windows at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour. The resulting brain damage is thought to kill about 60% of birds on impact, with many of the remainder left nursing chipped beaks or internal injuries that subsequently prove fatal.

In all, it’s estimated that the Toronto skyline accounts for about 1 million bird deaths a year — and even that is just a drop in the bucket. It’s hard to put a precise number on collision-related mortalities, but researcher Scott Loss of the Smithsonian Institute is preparing to publish new research that, based on a sophisticated analysis of 23 previous studies, estimates that between 400 million and 1 billion birds die from window impacts each year in the U.S. alone.

That eye-popping number suggests that window impacts are putting a serious dent in the North American bird population. There are thought to be around 10 to 20 billion birds in the U.S., Loss says, so it’s not unreasonable to assume that up to 10% of the entire U.S. bird population dies, year-in, year-out, due to building collisions.

Also see here & here.