Executive Housekeeping Today - October 2008 - (Page 4)

EasiEr Floor CarE (continued from previous page) physically stressful of all cleaning tasks. • Floor care interferes with traffic flow: Floor care usually requires that an entire area be closed to traffic for several hours. This can be unsightly and interferes with the daily operations of a facility. One final fact that must be stressed is that floor care is important. Some cleaning experts say that the first thing people see when walking into an office building, school, or hotel property is not the walls or the lights, but the floors. Floors obviously say a lot about a facility, including giving proof of how well it is maintained. Issues and Solutions Given these issues, floor care can definitely be a challenge; it is therefore fortunate that cost-saving solutions have been developed and continue to evolve. Green cleaning has definitely been one of these solutions in recent years. This is because the whole premise behind Green cleaning is to reduce the impact cleaning has on workers, occupants, and the environment. When it comes to floor care, the first way to do this is to incorporate strategies that help reduce maintenance. “Without question, this involves the placement of high-performance matting systems,” says Christopher Tricozzi, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Crown Mats and Matting. “These matting systems are a crucial component of Green cleaning because they capture dust, dirt, moisture, and contaminants before they enter a building. Less soil coming in means less cleaning inside.” To ensure that matting systems meet this challenge, Tricozzi suggests that facilities purchase their own matting systems rather than depending on rental mats. “A highperformance matting system is a higher quality [mat] and they are often designed with bi-level construction,” he says. “This way, soils seep underneath the surface of the mat, where they are trapped until the mat is cleaned or vacuumed.” According to Tricozzi, rental mats are not usually designed to be this effective at stopping dirt; their overall quality is also considerably less. For instance, a rented mat may have a warranty of only 90 days or less. High-performance matting systems, however, are guaranteed to last one or more years; this is because they are made with a higher quality of materials and are manufactured using more stringent methods. The Right Chemicals Chemicals and equipment are also helping to meet today’s floor care challenges—including reducing overall costs—but here housekeeping professionals must do a little more homework and be a bit more cautious. For instance, several environmentally-preferable floor finishes have been introduced recently. But sadly, many of these new offerings are not proving to be as effective as some cleaning professionals would like. “At a major office complex in New York state, 25 different Green floor finishes were tested, but only two performed as well as the con- ventional finishes the facility had been using for years,” says Mike Sawchuk, Vice President and General Manager of Enviro-Solutions, a leading manufacturer of Green cleaning and floor care products. “Some lost their luster in a matter of days, some needed to be scrubbed more frequently—defeating the goal of reducing the cost of floor care—and others had strange effects, like turning floor-installed metal electric boxes rust and green colors.” Sawchuk suggests that housekeeping professionals seeking long-lasting, cost-saving floor care products should institute their own “floor care challenge.” He recommends testing Green floor care products against conventional products in the same facility, as well as testing Green floor care products manufactured by different companies and offered by different distributors. “It’s like a trial with the housekeepers as the jurors,” he says. “Eventually the truth will come out—which products meet the challenge and which do not.” The Right Equipment The type of floor care equipment selected can also help reduce costs and meet a number of cleaning challenges. “First of all, (continued on page 12) 4 Executive Housekeeping Today/October 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Executive Housekeeping Today - October 2008

Executive Housekeeping Today - October 2008� Contents Executive Corner An Easier, Greener, and Healthier Approach to Floor Care Caring for Carpets in 24-Hour Facilities Frugal Housekeeper Case Study: University of Miami My Experiences with High-Speed Machines vs. Spray Buffers Vacuum Floor Care Q&A with Andre Motta Is a Spray-and-Vac System Really Better at Cleaning and Reducing the Risk of Disease? CEU Article The IEHA/CRI Partnership The Green Scene USGBC Green Tip What's in YOUR Janitor Closet? Inside the Industry Product Highlights New Members Joint IEHA/ISSA Members REH/CEH Members Advertisers' Index Calendar of Events Inside IEHA What IEHA Has Done for Me

Executive Housekeeping Today - October 2008

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