Our company takes advantage of many of its processes by incorporating recycling and reusing programs to maintain high standards of our green business. It is important to us. All chemicals and solution bottles are made with a high ratio of recyclable material and in turn is recyclable itself. Each month, on average, we recycle 15 pounds of plastics from our cleaning bottles alone. Our office uses a water dispenser to reduce plastic waste from disposable water bottles, but filling a thermos or coffee cup we have not only save money, but also positively reduced our waste. When bottles are used (out in the field) we have recycle containers at the office at the ready; this practice has allowed us to recycle just under 10 pounds of plastics. We do our best to have a paperless office. We reuse note pads and write on both sides. It took some time to get used to, but we have saved on trash and actual purchasing of the office materials. When applicable, and a cleaning solution has a “refill” option, we will opt for the low footprint refill bottle and follow instruction to mix in the original spray dispenser.
95% of our office set up, including a mini fridge, with the energy star logo and have automatic “turn off” features and sleep functions. We are not at the stage we can switch out our lighting, but we have slowly began to introduce LED, new generation bulbs, to reduce energy consumption. In addition, and many thanks to the Sarasota County Business Partner Program, we were able to install a new “green surge protector” which, let’s say on a computer station, recognizes that the computer is not drawing power and automatically turns off power to three other plugs. In this case we attached a printer and two monitors, which when not in use should not even use the trickle feature, further reducing power draw.
All of the products we use for business are certified green, organic, and / or green seal products. Not only do the homes and business we visit benefit from this, but so does the cleaning staff; being around chemicals and poison warnings should, in our opinion, be avoided. It is better for our health and our environment.