Posted by Heidi Schwartz
The nonprofit Renewable Cleaning℠ group has announced its support of The Green Hippocratic Oath – Renewable Cleaning Edition:
As a facility professional, I formally support The Green Hippocratic Oath:
First, Do No Harm to the Environment
This involves a personal commitment to educate myself, teach others, lead with purpose, act with integrity, and – teaming with others – apply the reach, power, and responsibility of business to optimize indoor and outdoor environments for health.
My goal is to help make schools and hotels clean, healthful, and productive teaching and learning environments, through understanding and applying the tools and techniques of Renewable Cleaning.
Renewable Cleaning is the prevention, removal, inactivation and/or proper disposal of contaminants to restore or maintain indoor spaces to their original or desired condition, while protecting and enhancing those environments for living, learning and working.
Renewable Cleaning, built on Green Cleaning, succeeds by emphasizing, “Less is More” with Sustainability as the goal. It prevents or removes soils and pollutants, does not add them to or distribute them in the environment, but promotes:
• Less harmful chemistry through use of benign but effective methods.
• Less soil infiltration through proper entrance matting, dust containment, and other preventive means.
• Less exposure to pathogenic organisms through removal (rather than poisoning) of microbes, while reducing conditions favorable to their growth through capture and disposal of organic matter or “germ food,” and moisture control.
• Less unwanted moisture in the air and on surfaces through better drying and ventilation.
• Less unwanted residue, contamination, and harmful byproducts, through more effective and efficient cleaning – i.e., cleaning that is validated by ISSA’s Clean Standard that provides target ranges for “cleaner” outcomes based on the measurement of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) – an indicator of germ-promoting soil – and IEHA’s Integrated Cleaning and Measurement (ICM) program that strives to achieve measurable improvements in a clean-for-health framework.
Charter schools and hotels that support The Oath will be listed on the Renewable Cleaning website in 2014. The Oath will be available for signing on the Renewable Cleaning website in 2014. The nonprofit Renewable Cleaning℠ group also urges formal support of The Oath Project at http://theoathproject.org/.