Cleaning services, like all service, have an environmental impact. This impact comes from direct energy use by cleaning machines, but also cleaning products, employees commutes or specific furnitures.
The Cleaning Service Carbon Calculator is an essential tool designed to help you measure and reduce the environmental footprint of your cleaning operations.
1. The Importance of Measuring Your Cleaning Service Carbon Footprint
Measuring the carbon footprint of your cleaning services is a crucial step in the global fight against climate change. By understanding and tracking these emissions, you're not only contributing to this collective effort but also significantly boosting your sustainability profile and reputation.
The environmental impact of cleaning services encompasses a wide range of activities:
Employee commutes, meals and work clothes
Vehicle fleet used to travel between sites
IT devices used, such as smartphones and tablets…
Cleaning machines, including scrubber-dryer, vacuum cleaners and washing machines
Cleaning products such as detergents, descalers and sanitizers…
Consumables such as toilet paper, hand wipes and soap
Equipment, such as soap holder and paper holders
Understanding these elements is the first step towards effective action.
2. What's Included in the Calculation Scope?
To get an accurate assessment, the Cleaning Service Carbon Calculator prompts you to input specific data across several key categories:
Agents: Mission duration, percentage of employees eating during work hours, and average number of agents per mission.
Mobility: How employees travel to and from their workplaces. You can provide a calculated or estimated total distance per transportation mode (car, train, bike, motorcycle) during the mission.
Work Clothes: The type of work clothes provided to employees for the mission (T-shirt, sweatshirt, pants, vest, etc.).
Vehicles: Number of company vehicles of each type (sedan, SUV, thermal, electric, etc.) used to travel between sites during the mission, and the estimated number of kilometers traveled.
Digital: The number of IT devices used for the mission (smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc.) and their estimated usage time.
Machines: A list of all machines used during the mission and their estimated usage time to account for their energy consumption. Our experts can include your own machines models to improve the quality of your carbone footprint result.
Cleaning products & accessories: The quantity of each product category used during the mission (detergents, descalers, sanitizers, etc.) and the number of accessories (garbage bags, dishcloths, etc.).
Furniture and equipment : Frequency of shipments and the number of each type of item in each shipment (toilet paper, hand wipes, soap, hand cream, etc.). The list of equipment installed on-site, such as soap holders, paper holders, and hand cream dispensers, along with their main raw materials (plastic or stainless steel).
This tool is flexible, allowing you to provide data in various formats, depending on the information you have available. The more detailed and precise your data, the more accurate your carbon footprint results will be. And don't worry if you don't have exact data for certain areas; reasonable assumptions are perfectly acceptable.
3. How to use the Cleaning Services Carbon Calculator
To use the calculator efficiently, follow the steps below:
Gather your cleaning service-related information according to the categories above.
On the menu at the left, under “LCA”, go to “Products” > select the appropriate template
Once in the template (calculator), go to the tab “Lifecycle inventory” > “Parameters” > chose in the dropdown list the options that best suit what you have and enter the data.
4. Save your data by selecting “Section completed” or clicking on “Save”
5. Under the Data Quality tab, check if there’s any alerts that might help improve your data accuracy
6. Once you've saved all your data, you’ll find the results under the Results tab, which offers various views for greater precision. Review your results to understand the impact of your cleaning operations.
You can also download reports from this view to use in your communications or presentations.
7. Use these insights to plan targeted actions to reduce emissions and enhance your sustainability efforts.