We had to make some fundamental changes in the way we do business to achieve this designation.

• All our vacuums are now HEPA  vacuums.
• All our mops are microfiber
• All our cloths are microfiber
• We had to develop and maintain a recycling program
• We had to use diluted and dispensed floor cleaning solutions

We have used the safest cleaning chemicals all along so we thought hte process was going to be a cinch. It turned out otherwise.

All our managers were trained to maintain the sustainability angle of the company. We had to write an exam and we all passed.

The process has been beneficial for us and will be especially beneficial for our customers.

And we will will always be able to say ‘we were first”.

Lee Senter

President

Fresh and Clean

Fresh and Clean is now offering this product for the use on carpets.

With all the bad press and concerns with the flurochemical products that have been sold in the market place for the past few decades its about time!

Of course we still offer our company warranty on this product. If in the first year (or until the next cleaning whichever comes first) a spot won’t come out, you call us for instructions, if it still doesn’t come out we’ll come out and take it out for you.

Fresh and Clean believes that green cleaning means using safe, non-toxic cleaning solutions. The solutions must not harm people, animals or the environment.

Cleaning carpets is a bit different than cleaning most hard surfaces. Carpet cleaners are cleaning textiles. These textiles have been made in a manner that hides the soil in them. Yes carpets hide soil. Most soil in a carpet can be vacuumed out. The stuff that can’t be vacuumed out is either water soluble (usually foods) and oil based soils. The water based stains are relatively easy to remove with most water based cleaning solutions. The oily stuff isn’t so easy.

Fresh and Clean has two products that clean oily carpets very well AND they are both certified by the Carpet and Rug Institute. All our solutions are certified by third party organizations who certify green products. These organizations include: Greenguard, Envirodesic and Green Seal.

Fresh and Clean is owned and operated by IICRC Approved Instructor and Senior Carpet Inspector James Lee Senter. If you have any concerns or questions about our cleaning processes don’t hesitate to email me at leesenter@hotmail.com.

We have also added a new green product for commercial carpet maintenance. Its an encapsulant called Vac Away Green. We will be trying it at select sites before expanding its use. Don’t you worry, we still have Can-Encap which is about as safe as it gets for all concerned. We are just trying to stay ahead of the curve.

Watch out for the formal release of our household green products. We have the IQ line of house cleaners which takes the meaning of green to a new level. We also have the We Care Organics line of laundry and toiletries. These products are available now but the formal launch will be around June 1, so watch for it, there will be great opening week discounts available.

Now I am not going to take the high road and say I know it all. However I saw many references to d-limonene as being green. Well d-limonene is a turpene, in other words it comes from the same chemical group as turpentine. It is a waterless oil. It is suspected to be a neurotoxicant, liver and kidney toxicant. I know if I clutch a d-limonene saturated rag (made by Dupont) that if I get the chemical under my fingernails my foot immediately starts to tingle.

I also know from past experience that when I (or my employees) use products that have a high concentration of citrus solvent it is hard to find your breath when in the immediate vicinity of the product being sprayed.

Fresh and Clean will use d-limonene or citrus gel as a safer alternative to your regular OMS and dry solvent carpet spot removers, but we will not use this product as an overall general cleaner thank you very much.

It is nice to have new additions to the family of eco friendly cleaners that actually work! In particular its nice to now have a cleaner/disinfectant in one that is certified green.

The eco-revolution is growing quickly. Fresh and Clean will always be in the forefront of green carpet cleaning.

Our prespray TLC  now has the Carpet and Rug Institute’s Seal of Approval, our rinse agent/cleaner Chemspec DFC105 also has the same certification. This means that these ultra safe products can be used on a carpet and not void the carpet’s warranty. If your carpet cleaner does not use products with this Seal of Approval there is a chance that he is voiding your carpet’s warranty. Check with your carpet manufacturer.

Don’t be fooled by other people’s claims of being green—insist on seeing third party verification of their claims.

The certifications you should be looking for are the EPA’s Design for the Environment, Ecologo, Terrachoice and Envirodesic.

We at Fresh and Clean take great pride in using cleaning solutions that have both the CRI Seal of Approval and a Green certification.

The initial training of ESPs starts this month and will continue into next month. An ESP is an Expert Sustainability Professional. Our company Fresh and Clean plans on having our staff trained by an ESP who will likely be the owner of Fresh and Clean and the author of this blog Mr. Lee Senter.

Once our technicians are trained by an ESP they will have to take a test and will then become Certified Green Sustainibility Contractors.

We’ll keep you updated on this program as it grows.

Why is this exciting for us? Well the product is made of food based ingredients! The only non-toxic product we have been using as a “shampoo” is Ecogent. Ecogent does foam up a bit, but its not really a shampoo.

Our foreman Paul “Stains” McMahon is out there using the product last week and next. We hope to have a report back soon on its effectiveness.

This preconditioner is made of micelle enhanced nano-surfactant. These micelles are made from corn derivatives. The neat thing about these nano-surfactants is they have the ability to attach to soils much smaller than regular surfactants. Regular surfactants attach themselves to soils in the range of 3 microns in size and larger. The micelle enhanced nano-surfactant attaches itself to soils as small as 1 micron in size. This may not mean much at first glance but in many situations up to 90% of the soil in a carpet can be smaller than 3 microns in size. The micelle enhanced nano-surfactant is new, but it is turning up everywhere and its making its mark very quickly on our industry.

The second step of our cleaning is the solution that is run through the extraction machine. This is a product made from 100% FDA approved food based ingredients. The really neat thing about this product is that it has the ability to rinse away organic materials and dries to a salt form. So, what this means is that soils (including old soapy residues) get rinsed away and the carpet is left essentially residue free so that it does not attract dirt quickly. Everyone loves a carpet that stays cleaner longer.

Now for those situations where the carpet has just been abused we still carry a variety of other cleaners. However I can safely say that we use the above process over 97% of the time.

As an industry instructor and business owner whose main theme is green I encounter people from all walks of life who want my opinion on this subject. The main concern of the people I talk to is “is the cleaning process going to harm my children or my pets?” The talk is rarely about the environment. Although most non-toxic solutions are safe for the environment, it is not a given.

The products I feel the most comfortable using are products that have been verified safe by independent third party groups such as: Design for the Environment (DfE), EcoLogo program, Green Seal and Envirodesic.

You must also consider that the carpet mills themselves are now insisting that you clean your carpets with a product approved by the Carpet and Rug Institute’s Seal of Approval Program (CRI SOA). The CRI SOA gives strong consideration to how green a product is.

There has been a bit of resistance by the chemical manufacturers to have their products tested by CRI SOA. When the program first started 21 of 25 products tested did not meet the CRI SOA’s stringent performance requirements. In plain English this means that they performed worse than water alone for carpet cleaning. This is all the more reason to use products with the Seal of Approval.

I like using products produced from renewable resources. There are excellent food based carpet cleaning solutions available. These products are manufactured from 100% FDA approved food ingredients. They are readily biodegradable. Readily biodegradable means that the product is 99.7% bio-degraded in 28 days.

There are several products that are botanical and many refer to these products as bio-based. There are product lines that use nanotechnology. These are typically made from extracts from plants such as soy, corn, grain, potatoes and trees. There are many other plant based cleaners available. But you must be prudent in what you choose.

There are many people who talk about there process being green but they use products that are citrus based. The main ingredient is often d`limonene and although from a natural renewable resource is considered a terpene. This is from the same group of chemicals turpentine comes from. So be cautious of people’s claims.

To sum it up, if you want assurance that your carpet is being “cleaned green” and it won’t damage the fibers make sure you see the CRI Seal of Approval and some proof that an independent third party has approved it.