Diversey products help shape facility management firm’s sustainability offering

Sustainable solutions matter to our customers—and increasingly, to their customers. When HECTAS, one of the largest facility services firms in Europe, developed plans for a sustainable cleaning program, it turned to Diversey not just for products but for expert consulting.

HECTAS already had established its commitment to sustainability and “green” cleaning, and had earned ISO 9001 certification for quality management and ISO 14001 environmental management system certifications. But they wanted Diversey’s help in strengthening their offering even further.

The program we developed with HECTAS creates a complete cleaning and hygiene solution for the facilities HECTAS serves. Equally important, we helped HECTAS develop a training program to ensure that its 12,000 employees in eight countries know how to implement an effective green cleaning program at customer sites. The total program includes:

• Cleaning chemicals that have earned the European Union’s stringent Ecolabel “EU Flower” certification as environmentally preferred products.
• Concentrated chemicals paired with expert dispensing and dosing systems. Compared to ready-to-use systems, concentrates eliminate up to 95 percent of packaging waste. They also require less space to transport, helping to reduce shipping-related carbon dioxide emissions and reducing storage space.
• Microfiber cloths and tools that help reduce the need for cleaning chemicals by up to 90 percent and deliver results superior to conventional cleaning. Microfibers have up to 40 percent more surface area
• than same-sized conventional cleaning cloths. The microscopic fibers trap dust and dirt, and remove up to 99.99 percent of bacteria on surfaces. Diversey’s durable microfiber cloths and mops can be laundered and reused hundreds of times, further reducing cleaning-associated waste.
• Energy- and water-efficient floor machines that reduce the need for cleaning chemicals and precisely dose and dispense the chemicals that are used, providing excellent cleaning and refinishing results with fewer chemicals and less waste.
• Ergonomically designed tools and carts that make work easier for HECTAS employees. Our tools are designed to reduce worker fatigue and improve cleaning efficiency, which helps HECTAS manage costs for its customers.

Hans ter Pelle, Chairman of the Board of HECTAS, wrote about the company’s new green cleaning offering, and Diversey’s support, in the September 2010 issue of Unternehmermagazin, a German trade publication for owners of small and medium businesses. In his article titled “Sustainable building cleaning: Progressive thinking,” ter Pelle notes that initial costs of switching from a conventional cleaning program to green cleaning may be slightly higher because of the need for retraining, but that the gains in productivity and reductions in energy, water, waste and chemical use will quickly pay off, while cleaning and hygiene results will improve.

“More and more companies are looking for a facility services partners that operates in a sustainable (i.e., resource-conserving) way and are specifically gearing their requirements toward this when awarding contracts,” ter Pelle wrote.