Cleaning our homes & work environments is important to protecting our own health and that of our families & people we associate with each day . But could the very products we use to protect our health actually be doing us more harm than good?

The truth is, that shampoos, body wash, soaps, and common household cleaning products often contain harmful chemicals that we are not aware of. 

If you are still using conventional store-bought cleaning products, know what you are buying. (Even some "Green" products contain ingredients that can cause a variety of serious health concerns). 

About 53 percent of cleaning products reviewed by the EWG, (Environmental Working Group) contained ingredients that were harmful to humans-especially the lungs, and potentially fatal if inhaled or swallowed. In addition, several well-known carcinogens were found in many of the tested cleaning products, and others are reportedly made with highly toxic ingredients such as formaldehyde, toluene, ammonia, bleach and chloroform.  Still others were found to contain elements and ingredients that have been banned in other countries. 

These chemicals most commonly irritate eyes, skin, lungs and mucous membranes, but can also cause headaches, asthma, nosebleeds, burns, hormonal interruptions, cancer and a variety of other illnesses and conditions. Even "natural" ingredients such as citrus oil, can be irritating to the lungs and cause air quality issues if used improperly or without proper ventilation.

According to a press release by the EWG:

"Just 7 percent of cleaning products adequately disclosed their contents. To uncover what’s in common household cleaners, EWG’s staff scientists spent 14 months scouring product labels and digging through company websites and technical documents. EWG staff reviewed each ingredient against 15 U.S. and international toxicity databases and numerous scientific and medical journals."

As a general rule of thumb, and to limit exposure & damage, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Manufacturers are not obligated by U.S. law to list all ingredients in consumer products. Products that are labeled "green" do not necessarily mean they are safer. Read labels, and use all products with caution.
• Avoid using any kind of air fresheners, solid, pump or aerosol.
  
• When using cleaning products, wear gloves to limit skin contact.
• Never use cleaning products in a small, enclosed space (such as as an enclosed  shower or vehicle).
  
• Be sure to keep the area well ventilated at all times by opening windows and doors, and using exhaust fans. 
• Never mix cleaning products, (Especially bleach and ammonia) 
• NEVER use products in a quantity or in a manner which they were not intended for. (Example: using toilet bowl cleaner to clean grout.) 
• Research more natural, less toxic cleaning solutions to reduce exposure to pets, humans and the environment.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has compiled a list of cleaning and bath products that meet its Safer Choice standards. The list also includes cleaning products used in the home and motor vehicles.

To view EWG's "Hall of Shame" list, click here.

For Green Cleaning Services in your area, visit: http://www.ijcsa.org/Green-Cleaning-Services

Facebook for your cleaning business? The answer is no and let me tell you why. The average FB user has 450 friends and creating a FB page for your cleaning or janitorial business is a total waste of time. Here is the scenario and reasons why. 

1- You are going to create a FB business page and invite roughly 450 friends to like your page. The average person on FB has that many friends. On average 10% or 45 of them will like your page. The same people that know you have or started a cleaning business because you personally told everyone on your personal FB page. The same people that might or might not buy from you because you advertised on your personal FB page instead of creating a business FB. 

2- Those 45 people that personally like you may if you ask them invite their friends also to like your page. Most of them will not. 

3- FB has little or absolutely no search value compared to other social websites such as Twitter.

4- How many people do you think actually go to FB to find cleaning or janitorial services? Very few. If you own a cleaning or janitorial business when is the last time you went on FB to find a service that you needed? If you did, did you buy from that service? Probably not!  I`ll bet that you went to Google first! People go to FB to keep in touch with family & friends and play games. Most users polled are annoyed when seeing advertisements and do not purchase from such businesses. 

5- As from other articles you will see on this thread the amount of money and time that you will spend on a FB business page does not return the investment. Especially with cleaning & janitorial services and this is a fact from polling hundreds of our members. It becomes a never ending cycle of you paying Facebook to "look cool" and generate likes that does not return the investment. 

6- FB reviews are shady and most are fake reviews. If you want to gain the trust of a new client give them the phone number of some of your current clients that you clean for. If you are doing primarily commercial take your possible new clients to a facility that your company cleans for a tour. Let you work speak for itself.

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Article From Click X: 

Unfortunately, the golden age of promoting your brand on Facebook has now passed, especially if you’re a small business owner. It has become increasingly difficult to reach that audience through the platform and even if you do manage it, getting them to engage is a whole other struggle. If you gain any customers or visitors to your site as a result of Facebook, chances are you will wonder if the time, money and effort were worth it in the end.

In this post we will explain why Facebook is so difficult for small businesses and why it may be more effort than it’s worth.

Source: Click X

  

From Forbes Article: 

In my last four posts I've shared some of the lessons that I've learned from helping set up lullubee.com, a new business that makes and markets kits for making crafts. After we launched the site and figured out how to take orders and ship products, the next task we faced was to get more visitors to the site, and ultimately more sales. In the next few posts I'll cover several of the techniques we implemented, but in this post I'll focus on Facebook FB +0% marketing.

The first thing we did was to set up our Facebook Page, as recommended in Facebooks "Four Steps to Business success on Facebook".

Once you set up your page, you need to get users to visit it and, hopefully, to "like" it. The reason you want people to like your page is that your posts will then appear on that users news feed. Over time this will allow you, according to Facebook, to start "building loyalty and creating opportunities to generate sales." The first method to get likes is to promote it on your own website using Facebook social plugins. As this costs nothing, you may as well do it, but the percentage of visitors that click on these is typically very small. The second is to purchase Facebook Ads that persuade people to visit your page and to like it. The irony of spending money to promote our Facebook page instead of our site was not lost on us.

After some experimentation I was able to create several ads that successfully generated likes on our page at costs that averaged from $0.27 to $0.57 per like. We spent some money and built up several thousand likes, all the while optimizing the campaign to better target likely customers. We justified the expense as it seemed to be analogous to building up a database of email addresses of people that wanted to learn about our site and our products. However, we shortly discovered our error.

Once we started posting on our Facebook page, we were shocked, shocked, to see that not all the users that liked our page were seeing our posts. For example, with over 6,000 likes on our page, a typical post would only be seen by fifty to several hundred people. To reiterate, only 1% to 5% of the people that liked our page saw our posts. If we were justifying our expense as analogous to building a database of emails, then it was a database that only allowed you to access a tiny, randomly selected, subset each time it was used.

Not quite what we had expected.

Facebook, of course, has a solution for this quandary. Unsurprisingly it involves paying Facebook yet again. Next to each post is a small "Promote" button which innocently suggests that for the mere sum of anywhere from $5 to $300, you can have your post reach from 500 to 50,000 people. This is equivalent to paying from $6 to $10 CPM, advertising rates typically paid for premium ad inventory, to have your post appear on the news feeds of people for whom you have already richly paid Facebook once before. Bear in mind that this is just for your post to appear fleetingly on their feed, with no guarantee that they will see it or click on it.

We have done over 20 promotions now at varying costs from $5 to $50, and the results in terms of users actions have been dismal. The effective cost per user action is over $2, and on some campaigns it can even reach $6 or $12. If we only look at "page likes" and "link clicks", and leave out "post likes", "post comments" and "post shares", whose value is even more ephemeral, the cost per action goes up significantly, from $6 to $20 and in some cases $50. Compared to the alternatives, these are unreasonably expensive. Unless Facebook is charging other companies an order of magnitude less than the rates we are seeing, Facebook promotions are simply not a viable option for small businesses.

Our biggest disappointment was our misunderstanding of how Facebook Pages work. Instead of building a database of users that you can contact at will, you are essentially paying Facebook to build a list of people that you can then advertise to.

Facebook, you can't have it both ways. Either ask businesses to pay for likes, or ask businesses to pay for posts. But asking them to pay premium rates for both is unreasonable and drives the cost of marketing on Facebook into the stratosphere. Perhaps this model works for celebrities or famous brands that can build up huge followings organically. But for small businesses that closely track their spending, Facebook Pages in their current incarnation are a bad investment.

The first thing we did was to set up our Facebook Page, as recommended in Facebooks “Four Steps to Business success on Facebook“. Once you set up your page, you need to get users to visit it and, hopefully, to “like” it. The reason you want people to like your page is that your posts will then appear on that users news feed. Over time this will allow you, according to Facebook, to start “building loyalty and creating opportunities to generate sales.” The first method to get likes is to promote it on your own website using Facebook social plugins. As this costs nothing, you may as well do it, but the percentage of visitors that click on these is typically very small. The second is to purchase Facebook Ads that persuade people to visit your page and to like it. The irony of spending money to promote our Facebook page instead of our site was not lost. After some experimentation I was able to create several ads that successfully generated likes on our page at costs that averaged from $0.27 to $0.57 per like. We spent some money and built up several thousand likes, all the while optimizing the campaign to better target likely customers. We justified the expense as it seemed to be analogous to building up a database of email addresses of people that wanted to learn about our site and our products. However, we shortly discovered our error. Once we started posting on our Facebook page, we were shocked, shocked, to see that not all the users that liked our page were seeing our posts. For example, with over 6,000 likes on our page, a typical post would only be seen by fifty to several hundred people. To reiterate, only 1% to 5% of the people that liked our page saw our posts. If we were justifying our expense as analogous to building a database of emails, then it was a database that only allowed you to access a tiny, randomly selected, subset each time it was used. 

If you are interested in a cleaner, greener home environment, and have been searching for a bona-fide, certified green cleaning service, you have come to the right place!

The IJCSA Green Cleaning Service Member Directory is a useful resource containing hundreds of listings, of the contact and background information for the green cleaning services in your state. 

Our members care about your family's health and well being, and are working hard every day to use earth, people and pet-friendly products and procedures to help preserve and protect the environment from unnecessary chemical toxins. Think of the positive impact it could on our families, our neighborhoods and our world if everyone used a cleaner, greener service. You can do your part by contacting your nearest green cleaning service to day, and setting up a consultation.  

For more information, contact: IJCSA 

Our #1 goal at Eclectic Domestics is to leave our client's homes, "Clean and Serene". Staring this fall, we will be leaving them Clean, Serene AND Green.

This summer, we have already begun taking steps to a greener-cleaner system, that will not only leave client's homes sparkling clean, but also less toxic and more safe for our staff, our clients, children and pets. 

The challenge for us was to use safer products without sacrificing our service quality, so hours of research and field-testing has been done in order to narrow down our core products.

Our first step was to brainstorm ideas and feedback among our clients, crews and team leaders. Then we set our goal to be "green" by the end of this year. We began to research and identify each ingredient in the products we were already using. We compared products with the help of resources such as the EWG Guide to Healthy Cleaning , networked with a variety of Green Cleaning companies via social networks, and local business groups. 

Next, we identified the changes that would have the most initial impact-and that were financially sensible to the company budget. For example, we were able to eliminate the use of glass cleaner (ammonia) completely by purchasing reusable microfiber glass cloths & trowels, that our staff and our clients love. In this case we improved the quality of service and eliminated one toxic chemical from our list. In addition, the staff's caddies are now that much lighter, placing less strain on the body.

Next, we found a citrus/hydroxy cleaner that is biodegradable and safe for pets & humans. It is a virucide and a de-greaser, and can be used in residential as well as commercial settings. This works on any surface, (except wood floors)  including soap scum, so we were able to eliminate bathroom cleaner. One less bottle and a dozen less toxins!

We replaced our toilet bowl cleaner with Sodium carbonate peroxyhydrate - (Oxy-Clean) and powder cleanser with Bon Ami . We are now looking into safer, nautral pH wood floor cleaners. 

We are on a roll-and right on track to reach our goal to be 100% green by 2018!

For more Green Cleaning Resources:

http://www.ijcsa.org/Green-Cleaning-Services

 No matter how comprehensive or how great your services are, the one thing that customers will remember most is how they are treated by your field and office staff, and by you, the owner.  

Therefore, one of the most important things you can do to improve impressions and relationships with your customers is to provide them with better customer service.  In fact, how you & your team interacts with customers will likely become your calling card and part of your personal brand. It is a wise move to identify and embrace opportunities to improve customer service, to strengthen relationships with clients and customers .  Here at IJCSA, our members  put customers first, and go over and above to ensure 100% customer satisfaction, each and every time.

Here are just three keys that IJSCA members use to provide outstanding customer service: 

• Clear Communication:  We listen first and respond to customers questions and concerns accordingly. We will never end a conversation until we confirm that the customer is 100% satisfied with the information, service, solution or outcome we have provided.
  

• Staff Engagement: Team engagement is another area in which we ensure customers have a great overall experience. From regular meetings and ongoing training, to suggestion boxes, and staff surveys, we keep our team members informed, engaged and well is taken care of. Happy and motivated staff results in great service and happy customers.

• Client Feedback: We want to be sure that we know everything about our customer's  experience: the good, the not-so-good, and everything in between. With regular customer follow up & feedback, we have the insights and the tools to use to improve communication, engagement, and ultimately our services.

For more information or to find an IJCSA member near you, go to this link: http://www.ijcsa.org/Find-A-Cleaning-Service-Janitorial-Service  

When searching for a true Green Cleaning Team, don't waste your time with products claiming to be green. Contact Wayne Thomas (T-bone Green Inc.), an official Government Janitorial employee and professional service of green products for all, whose mission is to ensure your company is utilizing true green products in your cleaning and floor care solutions. 

He'll provide you actual data of the products you need to conduct your green cleaning only with non-toxic environmentally friendly ingredients and chemicals to preserve both human and pet health. Products used contain chemicals and ingredients such as  Borax, white vinegar, non-toxic hydrogen peroxide, Melaleuca oil, olive oil, salt, lemon juice and electrolyzed water just to name a few. His green product recommendations  contain no flammables, benzene, bleaches, sodium hydroxides hydrochlorides, and dioxides that are harmful to the environment and living beings to include pets.

His recommendations are guaranteed approved for use as green cleaning agents or your money is happily refunded. So if you're ready to be in the game, ready to go and stay green with your customers, give Wayne a call and ask him about his weekly specials. You customers and staff alike will appreciate your concern for their health and the environment.

Hello and welcome to my Green Products Post. My job as a Government Contract Officer's Representative (Fort Lee, VA) allows me some leeway in determining products for use in our janitorial contract. I start of with checking with Federal Industries and determining what products they have available, as by law, we must use their products first. This allowed me about a 35% of green products right off the bat in which the contractor had to comply by law.

For additional products, I sought out information from the contractor Project Manager and determined he too had a list of products that were available for use, but had to be approved prior to use. I worked with him to develop our list of products determining products from bathroom cleaning through floor care products, establishing a list that bought our percentage up to over 90, but had to be both researched and tested. Research was done through the products' data sheets to insure the product was really  "green" and not just labeled as such. One the data sheets confirmed the ingredients of the product and we could verify the product as being green, we tested each and every one to see what the results would be after using the product in different situations and environments.

Details were measured and recorded for record, placed in a database easily showing it's green content and use for specific types of cleaning and floor work and submitted for approval to be used by the contractor.

Have you seen green stuff growing under the sink? Are you smelling something that smells kinda musky. Its possible you could have a mold problem. Let 1st Class Cleaning inspect your home or business to see and possibly remedy your mold issue. 

If 1st Class Cleaning cant remedy the issue we can refer you to a professional that can better assist www.clearviewcleaningservices.net  is located in the area and can assist with all large mold remediation.

Mold remediation , recognition and removal of mold will be used in 1st Class Cleanings list of services because let's be honest, there is money in it and the reason for opening a business is to make money. Not just to make money but I want to provide a service that is not generally offered in a cleaning service. Also because being able to notice and remove mold can help your clients to prevent a more costly job later if found early. 

Knowing what health problems can come from having mold in your home or business and having a local company able to assist in the removal would be a definite plus. 

Find A IJCSA Mold Removal Specialist Here

My number one statement to all of my team is, "We are a cleaning business, but more than that we are a people business!" Customer service is our main business regardless of what task we are handling. IJCSA ensures we live customer service through every work practice we perform.

Clearview Cleaning Services is so proud of joining IJCSA to further push all of our team members to be certified in customer service. Every certificate in the cleaning industry is well needed but customer service is a must for any business to succeed. The way we interact with clients is a pass or fail at any time we are there. Our ability to listen to problems of our clients and bring a solution is our highest quality of service.

IJCSA brings the highest quality certification to create a better business for us.