Floor Care: Can Green, Clean and Cost Control Ever Get Along?

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You’ve heard the old saying, “How do you want it—fast, cheap or good?  You can choose two.”  The message, of course, is that you can’t have everything.  But cleaning professionals today are being asked to deliver “everything.”   In-house cleaners and BSCs alike are facing demands to improve environmental sustainability, maintain high levels of cleanliness AND keep cleaning costs down. So how can they do it all?

Flexibility in a building’s cleaning program is a key to meeting the competing requirements for green, clean and cost control.  The ability to achieve the exact cleanliness level required for different areas, surface types and soil levels with the minimum effort, time and materials makes a strong case for flexibility.  Here’s a closer look at three factors that contribute to a flexible floor-scrubbing program.

1.  Ability to choose from among multiple solutions (water or detergents) for a specific job—Because there is no single “best” approach for every hard-floor scrubbing need, being able to match the solution to the soil is an important factor in an effective cleaning program.  Certainly, cleaning with just water reduces environmental impacts (no chemicals to dispose of) and possible heath impacts (no detergent exposure for workers or building occupants). Using only water as a cleaning solution can help remove detergent residue that accumulates on floors, and it also reduces costs because there are no detergents to buy.  However, water alone often can’t adequately clean high-traffic areas or cut through certain soil types such as greasy, oily messes.  A flexible scrubbing program enables workers to match how they clean to each area or soil level they clean.  

2.  Ability to spend more time cleaning, less time getting ready to clean—With labor contributing up to 90% of the total cost to clean, the more time workers are actually cleaning, the more cost-efficient your cleaning program is.  Of course, it’s not efficient if workers have to clean the same area multiple times (“double- or triple-scrubbing”) to get the desired results.  Ideally, the equipment used for floor scrubbing enables workers to handle cleaning challenges the first time, every time.  In a flexible scrubbing program, workers have the equipment and practices to handle high-traffic areas such as entryways or tough soils like grease without stopping to modify their cleaning approach.  Minimizing the time workers spend preparing their machines (filling tanks, changing cleaning solutions, etc.) also results in a higher percentage of productive cleaning time for workers.  A program that allows cleaners to make fewer cleaning passes through a facility is not only flexible, it’s time- and cost-efficient.

3. Ability to use fewer machines for more tasks—Automatic floor scrubbers can represent a significant investment for facilities or building services contractors, and the purchase cost is only one part of the overall cost of machine ownership.  Every scrubber or other cleaning machine requires specific training for operators, space for storage, plus parts and ongoing maintenance.  Selecting equipment that is versatile, i.e., flexible, can mean buying fewer machines and reducing training and maintenance costs.  The most flexible machines are capable of cleaning in multiple ways—whether with different solutions (chemical-free, water only, or varying dilutions of detergent as needed) or different scrub pressures— and allow workers to use the same piece of equipment for any floor-scrubbing job. This type of scrubber flexibility leads to reduced costs and higher cleaning productivity.

There’s a commonality in these factors that contribute to a flexible scrubbing program. They all empower cleaning staff to match the way they clean to what they need to clean. Putting this control into the hands of in-house cleaners and BSCs allows them to combine environmentally preferable practices with effective cleaning and maximum cost efficiency.  The result is a cleaning program that works in perfect harmony.