Gci Green Building

The janitorial industry might be the last place you might think of nationwide innovation, but the janitorial business is in transition as the Green movement takes over. This is no longer an obscure industry of brooms, mops, and trash removal. Things are changing rapidly and the Green market has brought new value to every janitorial service that cleans our schools, homes, offices, and factories. The reason is that the janitorial service is the starting point of Green operation.

What will drive this movement is the demand for Green offices and Green buildings. One interesting example is the state of Florida that passed a ruling that withheld state business from any hotel that did not qualify as a Green hotel. The affect was immediate and profound as the state is a significant part of Florida hotel revenue.

The states of New York and Illinois passed similar versions of a Green School Act mandating that all schools adopt Green products and Green practices in the cleaning of their buildings. New York has now mandated that all building owners take their buildings to a Green status by May of 2009. Other states will soon follow, and you see that the smaller market share for Green services will soon explode into the majority of all janitorial accounts.

Where governments go, business will follow. Right now, we are seeing city after city planning for a complete Green renovation of all city buildings. On the federal level, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush have signed executive orders mandating that all federal agency to Go Green by using Green products and Green practices. Therefore, we see the Green pressure at the federal, state, local, and corporate levels. These obvious trends are why many experts are predicting that all businesses will be going green in the next two to three years.

This new economy will bring what I call Green Pretenders who will take only token efforts to be Green but will declare that they are the real Green janitorial service. You see, Green does not come in a bottle but in the service that uses the Green product. When all janitorial services have a few Green products and some HEPA vacuums, we will see what I also call the “Green Equalization.” This means that there will be plenty of look-alike Green firms, but not of them are qua
1000
lified professionally.

The great separator of pretenders from Green janitorial services is their training and certification. This seems the only way to validate the level of knowledge and the commitment to reputable Green services. Green Clean Institute is now the largest training and certification program in America and Canada. Rather than self-appointment as a Green janitorial firm, it is important that an independent third party organization establishes a standard and required training for true certification. When a company who does the service also sets their own standard for performance, we are all left with arbitrary and conflicting ideas of what to expect.

Green Clean Institute has one of the largest student bodies of any comparable program with over 500 students nationally, as well was several international students. Recently, Green Clean Institute – Canada” has been established to bring the same training and certification to the Canadian janitorial and cleaning firms. If your company plans to “Go Green,” we suggest that you start at the most logical process in your building … the cleaning service.

It is important to remember that Green is not a synonym for environmentalism. Green is most correctly understood as the healthy status of a building and the concern for the health of the people who work or living in that building. There is confusion from programs like LEED that Green Buildings must have Green roofs, energy and water conservation programs, and access to public transportation. This is a nice addition, but these items are not truly about Green buildings. A Green Building according to the Green Clean Institute deals primarily with the indoor air quality and the issues affecting the health of the people in that building.

What is the effect of the Green Cleaning movement on the janitorial industry? The facts are clean that the cleaning and janitorial world is in transition, and it will be forever changed to what will come to be known as the Green Janitorial era. How people transition to this new status will differ, and there will be those who try to ignore it until the Green practice is literally forced on them by mandate.

By: R. Michael Richmond

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Find a great janitorial service for your company and achieve a GCI Green Building status. Green Janitor uses a unique janitorial service program to enable your company to craft a Green Building program that actually works.

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Can a landlord go through my trash?

The apartment I live in has a terrible trash situation. The dumpsters are placed so you can't get to one of them, and there is always trash piled around the other. The piles get huge, and sometimes it's impossible to place trash IN the dumpster.
I always try to get it in anyway–usually I THROW it in. Last week it was too heavy to throw, though, and I put it on the heap with all the rest of the trash.
The manager went through my trash bag, found my address in it, and is now threatening to fine me. I live in Texas–is it LEGAL for them to go through my trash? If so, do I have any recourse, short of joining a tenant's association, whose fee I can't afford?
Thanks!

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