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As a pioneer of the green house cleaning movement Maid Brigade sees it as our corporate responsibility to act as advocates for the consumer with regards to the health impact of cleaning chemicals. Most of our primary customers, busy working mothers, have neither the time to research these impacts nor the expertise to interpret scientific data which links certain chemicals to various illnesses.  Yet it is vitally important that you be able to make informed purchasing decisions to reduce potential chemical exposures and protect the health of your family.  Our consumer advocacy mission intends to assemble valuable information on the topic of household chemicals and cleaning products and convey that information in a convenient manner that is easy to understand. Our consumer advocacy web site, GreenCleanCertified.com, contains numerous articles and videos, and even an interactive quiz on green living. 

In 2010 we are doubling our efforts and have hired a Consumer Health Advocate to help us help busy working moms to achieve a healthier home through green living and especially green cleaning.  Through our research we have come to understand the “2nd shift” phenomenon – working a number of hours cleaning and keeping house after a full day in the paid workforce.  Our Consumer Health Advocate will also help busy moms with work/life balance – because this balance can have so much impact on health. 

Maid Brigade welcomes Marie Stegner as our Consumer Health Advocate.  A registered nurse, professional health and wellness manager and mother of three, Marie answers the call for more consumer education and advocacy related to the impact of common household chemicals on our health and the environment.   Marie came to us through our partnership with Mom Corps, the leader in the flexible employment arena.  She will be blogging for us on a regular basis as well as writing articles, creating videos and even appearing at local events - all to help busy women lead healthier lives and create healthier homes.
 

Maid Brigade is proud to announce that our company has earned Green Routing Certification from ServiceCEO.  Green Routing Certification means that we have met certain criteria to demonstrate that we strive to reduce our company's dependence on fossil fuels.  We do so by using special software that allows our maids and house cleaning crews to schedule client cleaning visits in geographic order.  In other words, the daily schedule is based on the most fuel efficient way to get the teams from client to client.  Spending less time driving means using less gasoline which means fewer carbon emissions, fewer green house gases, less dependence on foreign oil and a greener company overall.

We've been cleaning green for two years and will continue to offer the greenest house cleaning available today. Now Maid Brigade is taking a look at other green practices we can adopt to contribute to improving our environment.

Maid Brigade has launched a new video on YouTube titled "Non-Profits Sue Household Cleaner Manufacturers" Tuesday. The video informs consumers of the Earthjustice suit, a potentially ground-breaking suit for legal precedents protecting consumers from harmful chemicals in common household products, including house cleaning products. Green Clean TV is our web video series and includes several consumer education and advocacy pieces addressing the hidden health risks associated with common house cleaning products.

We created this video because we wanted to draw attention to the suit as an educational tool to help consumers become aware that the trusted cleaning products they use weekly, even daily, may expose them to unwanted health risks. Since package labels do not disclose 100% of the ingredients within the product consumers have a difficult time making decisions in the grocery aisle about the relative safety of various house cleaning product options. 

Further, with the growing popularity of green products in every category, "greenwashing" among soap and detergent manufacturers (using false or exaggerated claims on product labels and in marketing) is also on the rise. I don't mean to single out the soap industry here - greenwashing is on the rise in general - but I digress. If product labels were required to itemize all ingredients, consumers would be better armed to sift through marketing claims and make their own decisions about whether a house cleaning product is safer for them or the environment.

The video can be viewed on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbPb8Exd8gA

According to the Federal Hazardous Substances Act (FHSA) established in 1960 and since amended, house cleaning products are the only household products where manufacturers are not requried to list all ingredients.  Certain ingredients, such as fragrances, which ironically are often made up of the most harmful chemicals, are considered trade secrets under the act and are considered protected information. This is important because a growing body of evidence associates the chemicals in common cleaning products with mild to severe health risks.

BUT THIS LABELING LOOPHOLE MAY CHANGE. Earthjustice, a legal firm representing six state and national environmental and health groups, plans to file a lawsuit to make some major manufacturers reveal the chemical ingredients of their cleaning products, and their research on their effects. The suit is based on New Yorks state's Environmental Conservation Law, was passed in 1976 to combat the use of phosphates.  Phosphates are naturally found in humans and plants, but chemical use of phosphates can create abnormal levels of phosphorous in the body or the environment with damaging results.  The Environmental Conservation Law requires full ingredient disclosure and gives the Department of Environmental Conservation the authority to ban chemicals the agency finds harmful.  The  law has rarely been invoked in the past.

Proctor & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and two others would be named in the suit.  The Soap and Detergent Assocation insists the makers' products are used safely and effectively by "millions of people every day." This interest group represents 110 cleaning manufacturers.  The plaintiffs include The Sierra Club and the American Lung Assocation.

Currently, consumers who want to find out what is in the cleaning products they use should use the Household Products Database to access the Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) for a particular product. The MSDS discloses most of the ingredients. The database also contains information and research related to various chemical ingredients. If the suit is successful, consumers would have an easier time understanding their exposure, or potential exposure, to harmful chemicals AND finding alternative house cleaning products to use.

The link for the Household Products Database is:
https://www.householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov/

I found a fact sheet published on The Better Health Channel (www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au) after publishing my previous post on Triclosan.  One of the points the fact sheet makes is that "most bacteria actually help humans. For example, intestinal bacteria help us to digest food. The 'good' bacteria that naturally live on, and inside, our bodies help us stay healthy by keeping the numbers of 'bad' disease-causing bacteria under control.  When you use antibacterial or antimicrobial soaps, toothpaste and house cleaning products, good bacteria are also killed. This could be harmful if the ratio of good to bad bacteria is disturbed, and bad bacteria get the upper hand."

Strong immune systems are built just like strong muscles. They have to train - "practice" doing their jobs - so they can do them better.  Just like muscles, immune systems need to practice fighting off undesirable germs to get good at it.  When we take away the training regimen, the immune system's ability will decline just as a muscle will atrophy. Using antibacterials and antimicrobials when they are unnecessary is essentially taking away the training regimen.  A perfectly suitable hand cleaning can be achieved with just soap and water.  The antibacterials are great if you are visiting a hospital, flying on a plane or using other mass transportation.  Or, if someone in your home is sick with a contagious illness.  Otherwise, normal hygiene habits and regular professional house cleaning will keep germs under control in your home.

Other useful items to consider (from the Better Health fact sheet):

• evidence suggests that the use of antibacterial and antimicrobial house cleaning products - particularly in combination with the overprescription of antibiotics - may produce strains of multi-resistant organisms
• antibacterial and antimicrobial cleaning products are no better at eliminating bacteria than cheaper plain soaps, detergents and warm water
• consumers should avoid using antibacterial and antimicrobial house cleaning products unless they have a specific medical reason and have been advised to do so by their doctor

When it rains, it pours!  We've gotten some nice validation from MarketPlace (American Public Media) for our consumer advocacy work with Green Clean Certified/GreenTV. This project is a series of informative videos, outlining the hidden health risks associated with common house cleaning products and helping consumers sift through "greenwashing".  Greenwashing is when companies make false or exaggerated claims about the environmental or health benefits of their products...and there's more and more of it out there all the time, as the green movement really begins to gain traction with consumers.  Specifically, MarketPlace compliments our video "How to Hire a House Cleaning Service that is Truly Green", saying that it provides "sound advice" to consumers to help them distinguish green cleaning fact from fiction.

Check it out:

https://www.publicradio.org/columns/sustainability/greenwash/2009/01/on_how_to_find_green_cleaning.html
 

So how do you go from knowing very little about “Green Cleaning” and getting to being the expert?  It wasn’t easy, but Russ, Matt and Randy passionately motivated everyone at Maid Brigade to “Go Green” for the health of our customers, employees and the earth.

Our President, Bart Puett, and Chairman of the Board, Don Hay, especially saw this as a great opportunity to set ourselves apart from the rest of the house cleaning industry.  So not only could we be good stewards for mother earth, we saw this as our chance to be the “Green Cleaning” leaders in the home cleaning industry.  

After Russ, Matt and Randy held their workshop, Bart and Don immediately put together a Maid Brigade Task Force to investigate, Green systems, vendors, tools, products, industries, and Green Organizations to help educate us on what “Going Green” really means.  It’s really a lot more than just choosing safer house cleaning solutions!

During the investigation process, the committee learned valuable information about the differences between “Green Washing” vs being a truly “Green Cleaning” organization that takes “Green Home Cleaning” to its highest standard.  Standards that will lead us to being certified like the standards that the commercial cleaning industries are being held accountable to, which is Green Seal’s GS-42 Commercial Standard. (Search for GS-49 to learn how Maid Brigade helped Green Seal develop a standard for the residential home cleaning industry.)

Green Washing is when companies use terms like eco-friendly, earth friendly, natural, environmentally friendly, etc. that are false claims or are exaggerated. That’s NOT truly Green. 

Truly Green means that all aspects of your business, your processes, your tools, the way you clean, your solutions, are all in line with the best practices according to the leading Green organizations nationwide.

Check back in a couple of days, on how our Operations and Marketing  department kicked into “Green Gear” for our April 2007 Green Kick-Off!

Visit our www.Greencleancertified.com  website for more information on being truly Green!