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Green Sprawl
(Sanitary Maintenance Magazine)

Coming to a customer near you: A need for green training and know-how

June 2004
The goal of the Chicago-based Healthy Schools Campaign is to help Illinois school administrators create healthier environments for children and teachers by making improvements to air quality. This includes using green-cleaning products and equipment.

Chicago's mayor, Richard Daley, has made green purchasing a priority, and instructed the city's facilities to adopt green practices. The city's jan/san distributors have responded in kind. Many have tweaked and expanded product lines to address the increased green-product demand.

"Distributors see customers moving in that direction," says Rochelle Davis, executive director of the 2-year-old organization. "There were some distributors who had already moved in that direction and there was the sense that others needed to keep up."

Davis' organization is committed to helping schools achieve the goals the campaign has outlined as being preferable. Because asthma is such a pervasive problem at Chicago schools, good indoor air quality (IAQ) is key.

"Our general approach is to bring all of the key stakeholders together in a particular school district to talk about their issues and concerns," says Davis. "It's not often that people in the cleaning profession talk to a pediatrician [about cleaning's affect on health]. We foster a conversation about the problems they're seeing in terms of asthma in relation to IAQ."

The group put together a task force that sought to identify standards within the community to which they could aspire. The task force adopted the Green Seal standard, and its findings are published in a new report.

"These products were readily available and reasonably priced," says Davis. "The question of staff training was critical. We found a wide range of willingness by distributors to help [school custodians] effectively use products and equipment."

Following its recent success, the Healthy Schools Campaign's next goal is to reach out to other school districts in Illinois to educate them about what the program can accomplish.

Reprinted from Sanitary Management - June 2004
http://www.cleanlink.com/SM/article.asp?id=1263