Green Building Certification

What is the effect of the Green Cleaning movement on the janitorial industry? The facts are clean that the cleaning and janitorial world is in transition, and it will be forever changed to what will come to be known as the Green Janitorial era. How people transition to this new status will differ, and there will be those who try to ignore it until the Green practice is literally forced on them by mandate.

What will drive this movement is the demand for Green offices and Green buildings. One interesting example is the state of Florida that passed a ruling that withheld state business from any hotel that did not qualify as a Green hotel. The affect was immediate and profound as the state is a significant part of Florida hotel revenue.

The states of New York and Illinois passed similar versions of a Green School Act mandating that all schools adopt Green products and Green practices in the cleaning of their buildings. New York has now mandated that all building owners take their buildings to a Green status by May of 2009. Other states will soon follow, and you see that the smaller market share for Green services will soon explode into the majority of all janitorial accounts.

Where governments go, business will follow. Right now, we are seeing city after city planning for a complete Green renovation of all city buildings. On the federal level, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush have signed executive orders mandating that all federal agency to Go Green by using Green products and Green practices. Therefore, we see the Green pressure at the federal, state, local, and corporate levels. These obvious trends are why many experts are predicting that all businesses will be going green in the next two to three years.

The common practice is for janitorial services to add a few Green products to their janitorial cart, pick up some HEPA vacuums, and to declare themselves a Green Janitorial service. This is a token effort that will become a moot point as we reach a point of "Green Equalization." This means that all services will have Green products and there will be little difference between the general competition.

Green clean training and certification is the only way to prove which service is Green and which is pretending to be Green. Green Clean Institute is the best and most reliable source for Green Clean training and certification offering a federal trademark program and a national status recognized by Dun and Bradstreet. To understand the concept of certification, it is important that a credible third party establish a standard and a course of study to attain the listed certification. This is why self-appointed Green firms are ineffective. There is no standardization, and private claims can be readily compromised by those seeking only to use it in a competitive manner.

You may have heard of Green Seal, but Green Clean Institute is the largest training and certification program of janitorial services in America. They graduated over 500 in the first three quarters of 2008, and they are highly recommended by those who have earned the Green Clean Institute certification. If your company is planning to "Go Green" you will want to look into the GCIC Green Building program and whether your cleaning service is Green Clean Institute certified.

Unfortunately, many otherwise intelligent people mistaken use the word Green as a synonym for environmentalism. This is a mistake since Green is always a health-related topic. The LEED program adds to this confusion by including items like energy and water conservation, building materials, and access to public transportation into their version of the Green Building. Green Clean Institute believes that the Green Building should focus on indoor air quality and the health concerns of the people who live, shop, or work in the facility.

What is the effect of the Green Cleaning movement on the janitorial industry? The facts are clean that the cleaning and janitorial world is in transition, and it will be forever changed to what will come to be known as the Green Janitorial era. How people transition to this new status will differ, and there will be those who try to ignore it until the Green practice is literally forced on them by mandate.