During working hours, you probably don?t see much cleaning happening around the office. Unless you have a hard-working office manager who spends extra time wiping counters, cleaning dishes, mopping the floor and taking out the trash, cleaning happens when the office is empty. Do you know who cleans your office or how thorough the office cleaning services are? Do they come once a week or every day of the week? Are the bathrooms thoroughly cleaned and each individual desk completely wiped down? We all expect that our office has janitorial services, but we aren?t necessarily thinking about what that means. Do you know how dirty your office gets and how it should be properly cleaned? Keep reading to find out.
Let?s start with your desk. Whether you have a shared or a personal desk, there?s bound to be a computer, keyboard, mouse, food, drinks and personal items on it at one point or another. With all of these things, there?s plenty of opportunity for bacteria to settle in. You may think a little bacteria isn?t too bad. Other places in the office surely have more bacteria growing on them. Actually, 400 times more bacteria exist on your desk than a typical toilet seat. Now, that might make you a little more interested in the cleaning services at your company. Especially since less than 10% of people clean their keyboard and phones often, even though one-third of survey respondents believe these items are usually dirty.
With 100% of workers worried they may catch a virus at work, it seems like the cleanliness of the office would be important to all workers. Even so, of you take a walk around your office?s kitchen, what will you see? After taking a survey for Staples, half of the respondents say on any given day there are dirty dishes piled up in the kitchen sink. With an office full of workers, the sink is bound to overflow with dishes if they?re continually unwashed. That opens the door for bacteria to take over the kitchen after covering your desk space. In this instance, one solution would be for workers to make sure to clean their own dishes. This promotes cleanliness rather than leaving that as an added task for the janitorial services to address when they start cleaning.
Even though your desk is likely to be covered with more bacteria than the bathroom, it?s still an area in the office you want cleaned regularly by your janitorial services. Have you ever considered what products are used to clean? Currently, you can find 17,000 petrochemicals available that are used for office and home cleaning. How many do you think are tested for effects on human health and the environment? So far, only 30% have been tested. That makes the air in your office 100 times higher air pollution levels than outdoor air. If these products are used to clean your office, the air is 2-5 times more toxic than outdoor air which results in health issues and environmental problems. Exposure to carcinogenic chemicals found household cleaning products is part of the reason 80% of cancers are environmental.
Given those statistics, why wouldn?t you switch to green cleaning services? There?s no reason to risk your short-term or long-term health by working in a dirty office or an office cleaned with harmful chemicals. First, find out what janitorial services your office uses, how often they come, their cleaning processes and their cleaning products. If the answers are not satisfactory, do your research. Find janitorial services that promote green cleaning and the use of green products. Your family, friends and co-workers will thank you in the long run. Show them a few of these statistics, and they will even gladly support your desire to find green janitorial services.
Let us know in the comments below how your research goes. Did you find out that your office?s janitorial services were using harmful chemicals? Which green cleaning products do you support?
