Clean and Green

Harvard Medical School (HMS) began a green cleaning program in fall 2006. HMS Campus Operations began this program out of their concern for the environment, occupant health, and a desire to be consistent with the medical credo of "first do no harm."

What is green cleaning?

Green cleaning is defined as cleaning to protect health without harming the environment. Green cleaning aims to eliminate or reduce the use of potentially harmful toxins and carcinogens and aims to minimize resource consumption through product substitutions and procedural changes. Green cleaning emphasizes the environmental sustainability of cleaning operations and overall building health and does not solely evaluate building cleanliness based on appearance.

Cleaning chemicals and health problems

Many widely used cleaning products have serious adverse effects on the health of building occupants and janitors. The average person spends about 90% of their day indoors, where air pollution can be up to 100 times greater than outdoor air. Short term health problems caused by exposure to hazardous cleaning products range from eye irritation and coughing to chest pain and diarrhea. Long-term effects may include liver and kidney failure, birth defects, emphysema, brain damage, and even cancer. 11.6% of work-related asthma comes from cleaning products. In addition, people who suffer from multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome feel that low-level exposure to chemicals, such as cleaning products, causes them to feel sick.

Cleaning chemicals and the environment

Cleaning products can also harm the natural environment. There are over 70,000 chemicals being used today, and fewer than 2% have been thoroughly tested for their effects on human and aquatic life. Cleaning products are responsible for approximately 8% of non-vehicular emissions of volatile organic compounds, which can trigger respiratory problems such as asthma, contribute to smog formation, and inhibit plant growth. Chemicals in cleaning products contribute to the toxic waste stream when they are disposed of. Chemicals such as alkyphenol ethoxylates are endocrine disruptors that are slow to biodegrade and have shown up in the endocrine systems of fish, birds, and mammals. Other chemicals cause algal blooms in water bodies, which, in turn, kill aquatic life.

Paper products

Paper products that are bleached in the traditional method with chlorine create dioxin, a toxic chemical that does not break down and accumulates in the environment, harming both humans and wildlife. Chlorine bleaching also uses large amounts of water that then becomes polluted wastewater. Paper products further burden the environment through their use of virgin trees that are then used one time and disposed of. By switching to unbleached, or non-chlorine bleached, recycled content products that have minimal packaging, the effects on the environment can be minimized.

The process

HMS is a research and teaching facility located in the Longwood Medical Area. The campus is made up of 18 buildings comprised of approximately 2.5 million square feet. The Custodial Department within Campus Operations is responsible for the daily cleaning of all buildings on campus.

The strategy involved switching to Green Seal Certified cleaning chemicals and improving cleaning processes, three buildings at a time. In conjunction with the vendor, Eastern Bag and Paper, the Custodial Department set up a transition plan whereby the “non green” chemicals in the affected buildings were moved to other buildings and the Green Seal Certified chemicals and new dispensers were brought in. At the same time as this transition, the vendor set up an onsite training program from Johnson Products called The Healthy High Performance Cleaning Program for the custodians.

The time frame for the complete transition to Green Seal Certified cleaning products was set for July 01, 2006 through December 31, 2006. The reasons for the six month time frame were twofold. First, there were simply too many custodians (125 workers) to train all at once, as the transition team was particularly concerned that the quality of the training would suffer with too large of a group. The second reason was that the quantity of non-certified inventory on hand needed to be drawn down.

Outcome

HMS now uses paper towels that are Green Seal certified, 100% recycled (up to 73% post-consumer waste), and non-chlorine bleached. HMS uses toilet paper that is Green Seal certified, 100% recycled (up to 49% post-consumer waste), non-chlorine bleached, and employs reduced core packaging. Ultimately, HMS saw a decrease in cleaning product costs due to a consolidation of the types of chemicals used under the green cleaning program (downsizing from over 25 different kinds of non-green products to only seven different kinds of green cleaning products).

In addition, Bob Christiano, Associate Director of Campus Operations and member of the HMS Recycling Operations group, recently published case study on green cleaning at Harvard Medical School. This case study appeared in a report by Stephen Ashkin and David Holly of the International Facility Management Association Foundation, entitled "The Business of Green Cleaning."