Clean Green Certification recognizes companies that demonstrate responsible leadership in sustainability and conservation by acknowledging commitment to improving water and energy efficiency and adoption of best management practices for reusing, reclaiming and recycling resources.
Why Get Clean Green Certified? | Eligibility | Apply for Clean Green Certification | Audit Process
Certified Textile Services Providers | Advisory Board
Clean Green certified linen, uniform and facility services operations meet quality standards for effectiveness in conserving resources and minimizing environmental impact. Customers that use Clean Green certified companies to supply, launder and maintain linens, uniforms, mats and other reusable textiles can be assured that their provider maximizes sustainable practices.
Why Get Clean Green Certified?
With a Clean Green Certification, you will save on operating costs by conserving resources. sell the benefits of sustainability to gain and keep customers and serve the cause of protecting the environment.
Cost
Achieving Clean Green certification prompts your company to fulfill its potential as the perfect sustainable business model, aligning its economic interests with environmental concerns. Achieving the certification improves efficiencies, adding to the bottom line by decreasing energy and water costs and preserving the environment by conserving these resources. Fundamentally environmentally friendly aspects of linen, uniform and facility services (textile reuse and mass processing) have sustained the industry. To remain price-competitive, competitors must increase proficiency in these respects. See the list of cost-saving best management practices in the Clean Green standard that qualify your operation for the certification and control processing costs.
Sustainability
More than 60% of Clean Green companies that responded to a TRSA Marketing/PR Committee survey in 2017 indicated they have attempted to work with customers to connect the certification to customers’ quantification of their sustainability success. Here’s how respondents indicated certification has benefited their companies:
- “Has given us third party verification that our process employs best management practices for energy and water conservation efforts”
- “Credibility and differentiator”
- “Prospects have asked about green initiatives we are involved in”
- “Helped us gain traction with environmentally conscious customers”
- “Helps validate our commitment to environmental sustainability”
Ultimately, all customers are concerned about price, but more are beginning to appreciate the good environmental stewardship that maximizes efficiencies and thereby helps control or reduce costs.
Protect the Environment
TRSA’s Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Reusable vs. Disposable Textiles demonstrates the greener virtues of core linen and uniform service products compared with disposable equivalents. Isolation gowns and napkins have up to 70% to 90% less global warming potential; shop towels, 60% to 85%. The differences in resource use that drive those percentages can be substantial. The most efficient napkin launderer, for example, uses 47% of the natural gas (per napkin use by consumers) of the least efficient; 44% of the electricity; and 35% of the water. This highlights the value of achieving Clean Green conservation thresholds to improving environmental protection even though linen and uniform services are naturally the greener choice.
Verify Your Commitment Brochure | Choosing a Clean Green Launderer Brochure
Eligibility
TRSA Clean Green certification requires linen, uniform and facility services companies’ laundries to implement enough Best Management Practices (BMPs) such that enough points are accumulated to meet the requirements established.
Laundries enable their companies to qualify for Clean Green certification by following one of two paths:
- Perform listed best management practices (BMPs) and achieve water and energy use standards in accordance with millions of laundry pounds produced as shown on the table
- Perform a combination of BMPs considered more indicative of environmental stewardship and attain either water or energy standards.
Clean Green aligns with the ASTM International standard, Guide for Sustainable Laundry Practices, which recognizes key criteria for the certification as universal indicators of maximum sustainability in commercial laundry work. ASTM’s review of Clean Green’s best management practices requirements has verified these as the most effective and practical techniques for a laundry to achieve green objectives.
Boiler heat recovery or direct-fired hot water heater
These companies have fulfilled the Clean Green certification challenge, quantifying their commit to sustainability and the environment by documenting their conservation efficiencies in water and energy conservation and verifying their green best management practices