Why Choosing Clean Green Certified Companies Enhances Your Facility

If you’re a facility management professional, you’re engaged in an ongoing effort to evaluate and selectively implement a variety of productivity options that promise to enhance the efficiency, functionality, and harmonious operation of your worksite environment. Part of this task should include choosing environmentally friendly solutions to make your facility as green as possible.

These days, an increasing number of companies are achieving this eco-conscious goal by obtaining reusable textiles and uniforms from TRSA (Textile Rental Services Association) Clean Green certified companies. Let’s use this opportunity to explore the Clean Green international certification program and the ways it can benefit your business.

The Clean Green Advantage

TRSA’s stated mission is to provide assistance to “the linen, uniform and facility services industry by building and promoting a stronger, safer and more environmentally conscious community.” Its Clean Green certification program is an important element of this endeavor.

TRSA Clean Green certification is awarded to facilities that have demonstrated their adherence to the best industry practices for reducing, recycling, reusing, and reclaiming resources. Businesses that purchase their textiles and uniforms from Clean Green certified companies can be confident that their uniforms, mops, towels, napkins, floor mats, and other reusable products were laundered using environmentally responsible processes.

How do these facilities earn this certification? It’s based on a stringent set of standards intended to reduce negative impacts to the environment. These best management practices, or BMPs, include but are not limited to the following:

• Using only eco-friendly (NPE-free) detergents
• Establishing a recycling program
• Optimizing fleet vehicle routes to conserve fuel
• Performing an energy audit every three years
• Ensuring that solids and liquids are safely removed from wastewater
• Implementing a spill prevention plan
• Installing energy-efficient lights
• Setting up a boiler heat recovery system or a direct-fired hot water heater

In addition to the above, certified facilities must conform to TRSA’s water and/or energy standards. Clean Green certification is based on a point system that permits a certain degree of flexibility in meeting requirements.

The Clean Green certification lasts for a three-year period, after which it can be renewed so long as the facility remains compliant with relevant BMPs.

Why Use a TRSA Clean Green Certified Company?

When it comes to managing your facility, you can derive multiple benefits from the use of reusable uniforms and textiles over disposables:

• Disposables can be used only once and then are tossed in the trash; eventually, they end up in landfills and become another burden on the environment.
• While disposables might look like they are the cheapest solution, in the long run they cost more due to the need to repurchase new uniforms and textiles.
• Reusable uniforms and textiles can be used numerous times before they must be recycled.
• Reusable uniforms save your employees money on work apparel expenses.
• Facilities that choose reusable uniforms and textiles from a Clean Green certified company can also use this relationship to promote their own business’s eco-friendliness efforts.
• 30% less water is used by a laundry service compared with the standard practice of having employees wash their uniforms and reusable textiles at home.
• Facilities can reduce their carbon footprint by 42% when they use a laundry service instead of requiring employees to wash their reusable uniforms and textiles.
• Laundry services use 35% less energy compared with at-home laundering by your employees.

These benefits not only mean your facility and your employees can save money, but also mean that your business will significantly reduce its impact on the environment. Selecting a TRSA Clean Green certified company to supply your business with high-quality textiles and uniforms is a simple yet highly effective step toward promoting a green workplace.

By Jerry Martin, Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Prudential Overall Supply