Our school aged children spend the better part of their day at school…
along with the toxic cleaning products used to clean those schools. This can contribute to poor indoor air quality, smog, cancer, asthma, and other diseases. The EPA supports green cleaning in schools and wants to help protect our children and the schools staff.
Why is adopting a clean green routine important?
It’s healthier
When your cleaning routine is green, exposure to toxic chemicals is reduced or eliminated. Avoiding chemicals also protects the health of students and the custodial staff who have frequent interaction with cleaning chemicals. When green cleaning products are used, indoor air quality is improved and airborne dust/chemical gases are drastically reduced, which in turn, may reduce asthma attacks.
It’s safer and more efficient
Green cleaning training programs focus on safety and safer handling of chemicals as well as cleaning procedures, increasing efficiency.
It’s budget friendly
Green cleaning requires less chemical consumption, saving the school money. Less chemical wear and tear increases the lifespan of the facilities, saving money on repairs. Injuries to custodial staff and Worker’s Compensation Claims are reduced and the healthier environment lowers sick days and absenteeism
It’s environmentally friendly
Green cleaning lowers the environmental footprint of the facility, especially when combined with reducing energy usage, and recycling efforts.
How can you help?
Encourage your school to adopt Green Cleaning Practices. If you are not sure how to begin you can start with your schools PTA and bring up your concerns at meetings. A great place to start is by discussing the elimination of toxic products and finding greener solutions to keep our schools a clean and a non-toxic environment. The website Green Clean Schools offers “5 simple steps to green cleaning in schools” to help form a gameplan. You can even take a green cleaning online course or download the free book “The Quick & Easy Guide to Green Cleaning in Schools”
Our children are our most valuable resource and it is our job as parents to make sure we provide a safe, clean, healthy environment. Creating a greener school is step in the right direction. It might be intimidating at first but if you start small and build up your program step by step, before you know it you will have made a drastic, healthier change in your school!
Have you adopted a green cleaning routine for your home yet? If you have, or are considering it, good for you! If you still are on the fence, check out this post to see why you need to go green when you clean.
I try to use things that are eco friendly effective and safe-thanks for the review appreicate knowing about products that fufill my requirements
I never thought about the cleaners used in schools! I will just say my excuse is that Michael isn’t in school yet.
Great tips. I have been making a concerted effort over the last year to make the changes at home and find that I actually “enjoy” cleaning much more with the green products, but the chemical-laden ones are so harsh! Like Emily, I hadn’t even thought about what might be happening at school.
Great tips.
You make an excellent point. I go out of my way to make sure we don’t use crazy chemicals in our home – why would that be okay at school where our kids spend 1/4 of their time!
These are some great points! Even if we use all green products at home, kids spend so much of their day at school!
All our cleaners are Green and ecofriendly in our home, but I never thought about the school. Thanks for something to think about and ponder on what I can do.
For some reason I hadn’t ever thought about what kinds of products the school uses. Very good points!
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