Put your company in the Clean Green fold today!
Apply for Clean Green Certification | Standard for Clean Green Certification
Cost | Sustainability | Protect the Environment | Case-in-Point: AmeriPride Services
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.
Case-in-Point: AmeriPride Services
Clean Green is a company-wide certification: if an organization is a chain, operating results from all laundries are factored into the certification. Canadian Linen, an Aramark Uniform Services division, received the benefit of chainwide collaboration in achieving the certification. Bill Evans, who oversaw the chain as AmeriPride Services (now part of Aramark) CEO, explains why:
”We aim to lead in sustainability and set the standard for clean operations within our industry and beyond. We identify and employ production and delivery efficiencies that complement our already environmentally friendly operations. We participate in voluntary self-regulation activities such as the industry’s environmental stewardship program and Clean Green certification. And finally, we test new technologies and pilot new programs, such as our alternative fuel vehicles, that raise the bar and help move the industry forward.”