Every day, an estimated 60 million students and staff members spend time in schools across the United States, representing approximately 20 percent of our nation’s population. Alarmingly, many of them are being exposed to polluted indoor aid, including lead, asbestos, chemical fumes, pesticides, molds and other toxins on a daily basis at these schools. Introducing a green cleaning initiative could help to reduce the harmful exposure.
An eco-friendly cleaning initiative can offer the following benefits:
- Reduce carbon emissions
- Boost test scores
- Protect the health of the staff
- Increase lifespan of the educational facilities
- Preserve the environment
- Help to save the money in cleaning costs
Recorded data indicates an estimated 14,000,000 schools days are missed each year due to asthma, which is often aggravated by poor indoor air quality. Research shows there is a direct link between poor indoor air quality and sick students and staff members, which leads to lower performance in academics for the students and occupation for the staff.
Reported data indicates that 6 percent of custodial staff are injured each year due to some type of exposure to harmful chemicals. The use of eco-friendly cleaning products help to reduce the risk to illness or injury related to harmful injury on the job at schools nationwide.
The implementation of a green cleaning initiative can also increase the lifespan of educational facilities, carpeting inside these facilities and other materials that are typically worn down prematurely when harmful chemicals are used for cleaning.
According to the Healthy Schools Campaign, an estimated 23 million tons of carbon emissions could be saved if all United States schools switched over to the use of energy efficient cleaning equipment. Eco-friendly cleaning initiatives can help to reduce impacts from production, use and the transportation of cleaning products and related materials, ultimately reducing an educational facility’s environmental footprint dramatically.
Just for reference, a single school district in New York that switched over to eco-friendly cleaning has saved $365,000, according to the Healthy Schools Campaign. Switching to more efficient equipment and processes can be very cost effective and prices of many of the eco-friendly products used to clean, which used to be more costly, are now leveling out and are either even with traditional chemical-laden products or less expensive.
