The Polluting Industry

by John Downey

In a previous issue of The Cleaning Gazette, I wrote about my Janitor University experience, describing it as a series of paradigm shifts. In this article, I will more closely examine what is probably for me the most important paradigm shift that came out of JU: The “cleaning” industry is really a polluting industry.

As memory serves, it was Dr. Michael Berry, who this year will be recognized at the (OS1) Users Symposium with the Pinnacle Award, who first declared the cleaning industry a polluting industry. I’ve known Dr. Berry for two decades and I know that words matter a great deal to him. So when I first heard the words, words which at first blush seem absurd, I paid attention.

How could it be, that cleaning is polluting? It doesn’t make sense, does it? And yet as I thought about it in terms of my own experience with carpet, it did.

I was quite aware, for instance, that many vacuum cleaners merely recirculate dirt from the carpet into the air then back into the carpet (with some of it finding its way into the lungs of unsuspecting cleaning workers during the journey). Similarly, some carpet cleaning processes, especially the powder or granular ones, actually leave more unwanted foreign matter in the carpet after the cleaning is done than before the cleaning began. And other systems, especially bonnet and hot water extraction using self-contained extractors, remove a little surface soil but leave behind soil-attracting residues.

So yeah, come to think of it, it does make sense! Any time a cleaning worker’s efforts result in the introduction of unwanted matter such as dirt-attracting chemicals or stirs up dirt without removing it, it is a polluting activity.

And it happens all the time!

At JU, John Walker asked us to estimate how much of a janitorial worker’s time was wasted because the worker was engaged in a polluting activity. Most of the estimates were in the 30 to 70 percent range. I think Mr. Walker was surprised when I raised my hand and said that I thought in many activities it was in excess of 100 percent. How could more time be wasted than was spent in the activity? Well, I reasoned, if an activity resulted in increasing the pollution load it was 100 percent wasteful … plus … additional labor hours would be required to capture and remove the pollution that had been added.

Of course, in the polluting world that added pollution doesn’t get removed. Instead, buildings just get progressively dirtier and dirtier until at some point it becomes intolerable. Then someone is hired to do a partial or full renovation and the cycle starts all over again.

Unless they get lucky and come across a colleague who uses (OS1) and recommends they come to Janitor University. Then, through a combination of guts and perseverance, the cycle can be broken.