Category: CEO Insight

Announcing Green Seal’s 2024 Impact Report

Posted on by Doug Gatlin

This year at Green Seal we dove deep into defining safer and more sustainable products. In a rapidly evolving marketplace, yesterday’s definition of leadership can be table stakes today. That’s why we are continuously learning, improving, and innovating to ensure our standards demand true leadership at every stage of the product lifecycle.

Today, on Earth Day, we are illuminating the comprehensive nature of this work in our 2024 Impact Report. The report breaks out our impacts into the core elements of a green product:

  • Safer Chemicals: Green Seal-certified cleaning products protected 9.8 million students and teachers from toxic chemicals and asthma triggers in 2023.
  • Responsible Sourcing: Green Seal-certified sanitary paper saves 11.7 million metric tons of carbon emissions each year due to recycled fiber sourcing, the equivalent of taking 2.8 million cars off the road.
  • Manufacturing Sustainability: Green Seal-certified sanitary paper, made with 100% recycled fiber, reduces manufacturing water use by 30.5 million gallons each year.
  • Sustainable Packaging: Green Seal-certified cleaning products save 192 million pounds of plastic each year.

From eliminating PFAS from the supply chain, to defining sustainable sanitary paper, to accelerating the transition to sustainable packaging, we are helping our customers stay ahead of the curve by raising the bar for products that are safer for people and the planet. Ultimately, this means that no matter which aisle people are shopping, our trusted certification mark helps them cut through the chaos to find products that meet truly comprehensive health and sustainability standards — from beginning to end.

In this report, we are proud to highlight how, together with you, we are accelerating the transition to greater safety and sustainability in our workplaces, our homes – and our collective home planet.

How Companies Can Make Reliable Green Claims for Products

Posted on by Doug Gatlin

By now it’s clear that sustainable practices are increasingly important to both companies and consumers. However, for brand managers who want to steer clear of perceived greenwashing, actionable guidelines for making green claims that are both effective and defensible remain elusive. With so much confusion about what specific claims mean in the marketplace and uncertainty about the regulatory climate, how can brands be confident that their claims hold up?

A global sweep of websites by the International Consumer Protection Enforcement Network (representing consumer protection authorities from 70 countries) found 40% of green claims made online could be considered misleading. And the past few years have seen an uptick in the number of challenges targeting environmental marketing claims, not only from consumers and NGOs but also from competitors and investors. According to an analysis from the international law firm Alston & Bird, packaging labels, ESG reports, websites, executive statements, and other media have all been targets.

Consumers also are growing more skeptical. A 2021 survey found that most Americans doubt companies that claim to be environmentally friendly, with slightly more than half never or only sometimes believing such a claim, and 45 percent saying they need a third-party validating source.

As companies amp up green product claims to respond to consumer demand, it’s critical to do this in a way that enhances your brand reputation instead of leaving it vulnerable.

FTC Green Guides

The FTC’s Green Guides help brands avoid making claims that could be considered unfair or deceptive under the FTC Act of 1914. The FTC developed the Green Guides with an eye toward “how reasonable consumers likely interpret certain claims.”

While the Green Guides themselves are not binding, the FTC can take action under the FTC Act if a marketer makes an environmental claim inconsistent with the Guides. Recently, the FTC has gone after companies for “Green Promise” and “Eco Assurance” seals, VOC-free claims and certified organic claims, to name a few.

In addition to general environmental benefit claims, the Green Guides address several different types of claims, including compostable, degradable, recyclable, recycled content, free-of and nontoxic claims, as well as carbon offset claims. The FTC is currently drafting an update to the Guides, and the agency has indicated it is considering adding guidance on several terms, including sustainable, sustainability, and organic.

The FTC is not the only entity to hold marketers accountable for false advertising – the National Advertising Division, competitors, and consumers themselves have pursued action against companies for non-toxic, plant-based, and biodegradable claims for cleaning products, personal care products, and trash bags, among other lawsuits.

Rules of Thumb

So how can companies make sure their claims are kosher? By following one overarching rule: Make claims that are specific, qualified, and substantiated. The Green Guides state that, to avoid deceiving consumers, “marketers must identify all express and implied claims that the advertisement reasonably conveys” and “ensure that all reasonable interpretations of their claims are truthful, not misleading, and supported by a reasonable basis before they make the claims.”

In plain speak, a brand’s claims – including product names and images – should identify specific environmental attributes, provide necessary qualifications, and present the supporting data in a place that’s easy for consumers to access.

Adhering to this rule can be tricky because environmental claims are rife with grey areas. In my experience, there are three clear ways brands can avoid the most common greenwashing pitfalls:

1. Stay away from vague, general claims. Terms like eco-friendly, clean, and natural are broad and can be confusing to consumers if they are not qualified. After all, asbestos is ‘natural’ — but that doesn’t mean you want it in your home. These claims are currently unregulated, leaving it up to brands to decide what they mean. However, the Green Guides caution marketers not to make unqualified general environmental benefit claims because “it is highly unlikely that marketers can substantiate all reasonable interpretations of these claims.” If a brand wants to claim its product is eco-friendly, it should explain which specific attributes make it so.

2. Use relative terms. Absolute terms like safe or sustainable are not defensible. Claiming that a product is sustainable, for example, implies that it can be maintained without impacting the environment. While the product may be more sustainable than conventional alternatives or the packaging may be made using sustainably harvested materials, it is highly improbable that the product in its entirety is sustainable. Instead, use relative terms like safer, cleaner or more sustainable, and provide substantiation for the claim on your product label or on a webpage that you point to from your product label.

3. Provide details. Claims that are technically true still can be misleading. For example, if a product states that it is now using “greener packaging than ever before,” an accompanying message should explain how. Would anyone be impressed if the product’s packaging previously contained 8% recycled content and now contains 9%? In this case, the company should provide context on the percentage of weight-reduction achieved with the new packaging, the percentage of recycled content incorporated, or other initiatives that were implemented to make the packaging greener.

For most claims, substantiation is key. The FTC says that substantiating environmental marketing claims “often requires competent and reliable scientific evidence” consisting of “tests, analyses, research, or studies that have been conducted and evaluated in an objective manner by qualified persons and are generally accepted in the profession to yield accurate and reliable results.”

Brands that work with Green Seal often use our third-party certification as their claims substantiation. In fact, we provide a green claims audit for all Green Seal-certified products because we require certified products to conform with Green Guides best practices.

Changes Abroad

Brands with an international presence are keeping an eye on the EU, where the European Commission has begun publishing a package of proposals that aim to make sustainable products the norm. This includes the so-called Green Claims Directive, which establishes common criteria against greenwashing and misleading environmental claims and would make environmental claims and labels reliable, comparable, and verifiable across the EU.

The Green Claims Directive would raise the bar on the EU’s already stringent framework prohibiting misleading claims by introducing detailed requirements for substantiation and communication to consumers.

While global guidance on green marketing is evolving to combat greenwashing, it’s up to companies to act in good faith when making green product claims. However, with the increasing skepticism of green claims from both consumers and regulators, verification from a reputable third party is a clear way to mitigate greenwashing risk and increase confidence in your company’s claims. Thoughtfully considering and verifying product green claims not only guards against litigation and brand risk, but also increases trust in these claims in the marketplace — rewarding leadership and facilitating the sustainability progress we all want.

Safer Hotel Disinfecting: How to Sustainably Address Guest Concerns

Posted on by Doug Gatlin

Republished from the Hotel Business Review with permission from www.HotelExecutive.com.

As the world opens up amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, travelers have come to expect more frequent cleaning and disinfecting in the spaces they occupy – but it does not have to come at the expense of healthy indoor air quality.

While uncertainty about how the virus spread during the early days of the pandemic led to a significant increase in the use of harsh cleaning chemicals, two years later we have much better information that allows hotels to protect guests both from the virus and from the negative health effects of exposure to disinfecting chemicals.

Cleaning for COVID Starts with Accurate Information

From the very beginning of the pandemic, scientists understood that coronaviruses break down easily with plain soap and water or regular cleaning solution. However, most businesses acted on a natural instinct to turn to the harshest cleaning chemicals available: disinfectants.

Today we know that the virus spreads primarily through respiratory droplets, and the risk of surface transmission is extremely low. In fact, research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that the chance of being infected with COVID-19 from touching a contaminated surface is less than 1 in 10,000.

This means that covering surfaces with chemicals will not necessarily help prevent the spread of COVID, but it could lead to significant health risks for building occupants. Hotel and lodging properties can guard against viruses and other germs – while also protecting the building’s indoor air quality and the health and safety of guests – by understanding how to choose safer products and when disinfecting is appropriate.

Travelers’ Expectations are Changing

Despite recommendations from the CDC, hotel guests are looking for evidence that substantial cleaning and disinfecting are taking place. So, while the risk of surface-born infection is extremely low, business still must reassure people about safety amid the continuing pandemic. In fact, a 2020 study revealed that 85 percent of consumers want to see visible proof of cleaning.

“The pandemic has placed cleanliness, safety, and security at the forefront of what we now consider luxury, and these criteria are now the priority to pick and choose a hotel to stay at,” says Cecile Sandral-Lasbordes, Director of PR & Marketing – Guest Experience & Quality Leader for Sofitel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills, a Green Seal-certified property. “Guests are more alert and educated than ever on cleaning measures and how to fight germs, and they want transparency on what we are doing at the hotel level. But they also want these measures to become part of the overall hotel stay, not disconnected from it. The cleaning and disinfecting need to elevate the experience, not create a context of fear.”

Ninety-five percent of customers responding to a 2021 study said they want to see cleaning practices stay the same or increase even after the COVID vaccine is widespread, indicating that effective cleaning and disinfecting are more than a short-term trend. Guests continue to demand more from housekeeping personnel, underscoring the importance of maintaining a robust cleaning plan for both guest safety and peace of mind.

“Understanding the new expectations and learning to evolve with them is key,” says Sandral-Lasbordes. “The pandemic has taught us that we need to be flexible to survive. Transparency is also extremely important, as well as constantly training our team members to stay up to date with the latest rules and regulations and how to reimagine our work.”

Avoiding a Dangerous Reliance on Disinfectants

Because of the nature of the COVID-19 virus, masking, vaccines, and regular handwashing are the most effective precautions against its spread. However, cleaning and disinfecting are among several additional measures that can help protect guests and reassure them about the safety of a property’s indoor environment.

While regular cleaning is typically effective at removing most virus particles on surfaces, targeted disinfection is sometimes appropriate – such as when someone confirmed or suspected to be infected with COVID has been in the building within the past 24 hours. Otherwise, cleaning regularly is sufficient, so hotel staff do not have to worry about cleaning every time a guest or employee touches a surface.

Even when disinfecting is appropriate, it’s only effective after regular cleaning, as cleaning removes dirt and grime that viruses can hide under. It is also vital to ensure housekeeping employees are using the appropriate cleaning products for the surface, that the products are certified for health and performance, and that housekeeping employees are trained on disinfectants’ dwell times, which can range from 30 seconds to 10 minutes.

Though disinfectants are sometimes needed, they are not harmless: Repeated or extended exposures to disinfecting chemicals can lead to significant health effects. Some common disinfectant ingredients, such as quaternary ammonium compounds, are linked to asthma and reproductive toxicity.

Exposure poses an especially grave risk for the 1 in 13 Americans with asthma – a group that is high-risk for COVID-19. This means that overusing disinfectants to combat the virus can worsen the problem you are trying to solve. Even low levels of indoor air pollutants like these can trigger respiratory symptoms, so it’s critical that hospitality properties make safer choices for the comfort and safety of guests and employees.

Choosing Safer Cleaning Products and Disinfectants

Choosing safer, verified-effective cleaning products – especially those that do not contain asthmagens or respiratory irritants – is critical to protecting hotel staff and guests. Conventional cleaners commonly contain endocrine disruptors and carcinogens, which have been linked to a variety of diseases. Only a few hundred of the 80,000-plus chemicals registered for use in the U.S. have been evaluated for health and environmental effects – so the chemicals inside your cleaning products matter more than you might initially think.

In addition to respiratory irritants, conventional cleaners commonly contain chemicals that can disrupt the endocrine system. The endocrine system is like the body’s conductor – setting the rhythm for metabolism, growth, mood, and sleep patterns. Endocrine disrupting chemicals are linked to a plethora of adverse health effects including hormone changes, lower sperm counts, birth defects, obesity, diabetes, thyroid irregularities, reduced immune function, and reduced vaccine response. Due to the hazardous nature of these chemicals, some third-party certification organizations have restricted endocrine disrupters. Green Seal, for example, prohibits phthalates, bisphenol A (BPA), nonylphenol ethoxylates (the byproducts of alkylphenols), and glycol ethers in certified cleaning products.

While housekeepers are most at risk from exposure to hazardous cleaning chemicals, other employees and hotel guests also come into contact with these products daily. To protect people while they are in your space, procurement managers can look for products that have been verified for health, safety, and performance by a credible third-party organization. Green Seal maintains a publicly accessible directory of certified products at certified.greenseal.org.

Like cleaning products, some disinfectants are safer for human and environmental health than others. However, identifying these products can be more challenging because the U.S. EPA does not allow third-party certifications for disinfecting solutions. Purchasers instead must rely on product ingredient labels and resources from leading ecolabels to distinguish safer formulas.

The U.S. EPA’s List N: Disinfectants for Coronavirus is a great resource for finding products that are effective against the COVID-19 virus. This list, however, does not identify which products use safer active ingredients. Green Seal recommends choosing approved disinfectants with safer active ingredients such as citric acid, hydrogen peroxide, or isopropyl alcohol, which are not linked to asthma, cancer, endocrine disruption, or DNA damage. A full list of recommended safer active disinfecting ingredients, as well as examples of List N products that use these ingredients, is available here.

How to Safely Adapt to Traveler Demands

In addition to selecting safer cleaning and disinfecting products, lodging properties can promote safety, sustainability, and equity by implementing proven-effective cleaning practices, strengthening cleaning and disinfecting protocols, and effectively communicating their efforts with guests.

Green Seal’s Guidelines for Safer Cleaning and Disinfection for Workplaces offer science-based guidance on best practices. These guidelines align with the LEED Safety First Pilot Credit for Cleaning and Disinfecting, another resource hotel and lodging properties can rely on. The guidelines lay out five actionable best practices for property owners and managers:

  • Create a cleaning and disinfection plan, following CDC and EPA guidance. The plan should identify high-touch surfaces and implement a policy that goes beyond visual inspections to regularly verify the effectiveness of cleaning and disinfecting.
  • Ensure that housekeeping staff are properly trained on the safe handling of all cleaning and disinfecting products, effective cleaning procedures, and the use and maintenance of cleaning equipment. This includes training housekeeping staff to prioritize ventilation by opening windows and running fans, when possible, and to follow the instructions on product labels, including dwell times. Training should also include best practices for preventing ergonomic injuries and using and disposing of personal protective equipment (PPE) to reduce injuries and exposure to harmful chemicals.
  • Select products that maintain sustainability and healthy indoor air. This includes choosing certified green cleaning products and disinfectants with safer active ingredients.
  • Provide safer working conditions for housekeeping staff. Use the most effective PPE for cleaning and disinfecting and use ergonomic cleaning equipment with features that reduce worker injuries.
  • Communicate the cleaning and disinfecting plan to other employees and guests so everyone can understand what measures are in place to protect safety. As travelers demand more visibility into businesses’ cleaning protocols, effectively communicating your lodging property’s protective requirements is more important than ever.

In addition to following the above guidelines, hotels that want to verify that they are adhering to best practices for cleaning performance and health protection can apply for certification or validation from independent organizations including Green Seal, LEED, WELL, or Fitwel.

Promoting Equity Through Green Cleaning and Disinfecting

Using safe, effective green cleaning and disinfecting practices offers the same health and performance benefits as before the pandemic, but the stakes are greater now, since excessive use of hazardous chemicals has become the norm.

The pandemic has shone a spotlight on the roles and sacrifices of housekeeping professionals. These frontline workers put their own health on the line to protect the health of others. Promoting safer cleaning products and practices offers a significant opportunity to promote social equity for the members of this behind-the-scenes workforce, who are predominantly members of under-represented and marginalized communities.

Several studies found that both domestic and professional cleaning work are associated with increased risk of asthma and other respiratory effects. In fact, the first long-term study of the effects of cleaning chemicals on lung function found that regular use of cleaning sprays can cause a decline in lung function that is comparable to smoking 20 cigarettes per day.

Hotels can promote equity by sourcing certified green cleaning products; choosing List-N disinfectants that use safer active ingredients; and adhering to independent, science-based guidelines, such as Green Seal’s Disinfecting Guidelines or the LEED Safety First Pilot Credit for Cleaning and Disinfecting.

Society’s understanding of the virus has evolved over the course of the pandemic, and so must the response. Hotel guests now have an unprecedented interest in indoor air quality that is expected to long outlast the pandemic. By following the latest independent, science-based guidance on cleaning and disinfecting, hospitality property owners and managers can provide assurance that they are on top of the necessary measures to protect the health of guests and employees effectively and holistically.

Announcing Green Seal’s 2022 Impact Report

Posted on by Green Seal

By Doug Gatlin, Green Seal CEO, and Christina Martin, Green Seal Board Chair

Over the past year, the topic of indoor air quality has captured our conversations in a way few would have dreamed of before the pandemic. As the world tries to find a new equilibrium, the health and safety profiles of the schools, offices, and public spaces we are returning to has never been more important.

This is a moment that was made for Green Seal, which has always applied science to help people navigate toward choices that promote healthy indoor environments. Over the past year, Green Seal launched standards, certifications, and resources to make it easier for everyone to find safer, healthier products and create spaces where people can thrive during the pandemic and beyond.

Among the most impactful of these initiatives is Green Seal’s Healthy Green Schools & Colleges, the first national healthy-air standard for school facilities. With an accessible learn-as-you-go structure and a focus on low- and no-cost measures, this standard fills a critical gap to provide schools with the information and support they need to ensure the quality of learning environment that every student in America deserves.

To support a heightened focus on workplace health and wellness, Green Seal announced a new certification standard for paints and coatings that fully aligns with the latest version of the LEED® green building rating system and identifies the safest, greenest paint available on the market today.

And, with a growing body of evidence indicating that per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are likely to have harmful health and environmental effects, Green Seal took a leadership position with an initiative to prohibit all approximately 12,000 PFAS chemicals in certified products.

Demonstrating that there is power in partnerships, our collaborative efforts with Amazon Climate Pledge Friendly, the U.S. Green Building Council, the International WELL Building Institute, Healthy Schools Campaign, and Health Product Declaration Collaborative are amplifying Green Seal’s impact and accelerating the transition to safer, greener products and spaces.

As we cautiously and hopefully emerge from the worst of the pandemic, the twin pillars of health and environmental sustainability that Green Seal has stood for over the past 30-plus years are more in demand today than ever before. In the 2022 Impact Report, we are proud to highlight the impactful initiatives and partnerships that are making it simpler for consumers, parents, business owners and others to choose healthier, safer products and services with confidence.

Consumer Beliefs are Changing About Sustainable Products

Posted on by Doug Gatlin

The question that often surfaces when people consider new green products is, “That’s great, but does it work?” While this has long been the case, new research shows that consumers, particularly younger generations, are beginning to see sustainable products as higher performing than conventional alternatives.

New research highlighted by the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University reveals that a growing generation of consumers view sustainability as a product characteristic that enhances, rather than detracts from, other product attributes. These buyers believe that responsible brands outperform their less sustainable counterparts — a drastic shift from the sustainability-liability mindset of the past. This change in the perceived value of environmentally preferable products is a testament to the quality of the sustainable brands available today and a beacon of hope for the future of responsible companies. 

Identifying Sustainable Features

As those of us working with environmentally preferable products have long known, sustainable products can work as well as, or better than, conventional alternatives, but for consumers, understanding what to look for in sustainable products can be tricky. Nearly three out of four Americans responding to GreenPrint’s Business of Sustainability Index study did not know how to identify products that were environmentally conscious. Interestingly, 45 percent said they would trust a third-party source to validate if a company is, in fact, more sustainable. Ecolabels, including Green Seal, scientifically validate that products are safer for the planet, helping align manufacturers’ claims and consumers’ perceptions of sustainability.

Manufacturers are amping up the focus on sustainability as consumer demand for these products increases. According to Forbes, more than 40 percent of manufacturing respondents in a recent study said sustainability is a priority at every stage of the manufacturing process. While it is a focal point for many manufacturers, conveying sustainability as an additional product benefit is easier said than done. When successful, brands are able to differentiate their product lines by highlighting environmentally preferable ingredients.

Shifting Priorities

Despite confusion caused by greenwashing and unsubstantiated marketing claims, consumers and manufacturers increasingly see sustainability as an attribute worth paying for. Sixty-seven percent of American consumers said they were willing to pay extra for sustainable products in a 2018 survey, though there is often a disconnect between intent and action.

Sustainable products have historically been associated with higher price points due to research and development costs, paying living wages for labor, and making other sustainable investments. However, this is no longer clear-cut. “In many categories natural products have reached price and performance parity with conventional brands,” said Stuart Landesberg, CEO of Grove Collaborative, in an interview with San Franciso Business Times.

Even in cases where prices are higher, younger generations are more willing to make the switch to greener alternatives. One quarter of Millennials and 22 percent of Gen Zers said they were willing to pay 11 to 20 percent more for products that were certified as sustainable, with an additional 50 and 65 percent, respectively, willing to pay up to 10 percent more. These consumers are also more likely than any other generation to seek out information related to environmentally friendly lifestyles and to feel ashamed about their less sustainable choices. These two generations represent a substantial portion of the American market — 42 percent combined — and have spending power of approximately $3 trillion. So, this shift toward sustainability has the potential to change the marketplace permanently.

Behavior Changes and Social Signaling

In addition to seeking sustainable products, younger generations are continuing to shift their purchasing from brick-and-mortar stores to ecommerce, especially amid the pandemic. One 2020 study found that nearly 86 percent of Millennials made a purchase online in the past year and, with ecommerce sales predicted to bring in an annual revenue of $6.5 trillion globally in 2023, an opportunity exists for smaller, sustainability-focused online retailers.

However, sustainable spending may not be evenly distributed across every product category. Research indicates that social signaling may influence which sustainable products we choose. This theory suggests that people buy environmentally preferable products not only because they like them and want to make a difference, but also because they like the way others will perceive them for owning it. This could explain why some industries are ahead of the curve when it comes to the adoption of more sustainable options; our cars, furniture, and fashion choices, for example, are much more visible to others than the cleaning products or sanitary paper we use.

Yet, studies show that the pandemic and current health-focused trends are increasing the retail value of environmentally conscious laundry, dishwashing, and surface cleaners. The sustainable cleaning product industry is projected to grow twice as fast as the overall cleaning product market over the next five years, reaching $72.9 billion in retail value in 2021 alone. This indicates that consumers are now shifting the way they make purchases across product categories, opting for items that match their personal values rather than those that achieve external validation.

Introducing Green Seal’s Compass: Health, Waste, Water, and Climate

Posted on by Doug Gatlin

Whether you’re exploring the Green Seal certification process or identifying safer products for your home or workplace, you may be interested in understanding what Green Seal prioritizes in its standards. From hand sanitizers and cleaning products to paints and sanitary paper, the Green Seal Compass guides our work to ensure only the healthiest, most responsible, and proven effective products are certified to Green Seal standards.

Did You Know…

Green Seal follows a compass that focuses on four key targets: human health, waste, water, and climate. We develop our sustainability criteria using a lifecycle analysis method, which identifies the health and environmental impacts of a product all the way from raw material extraction to manufacturing, packaging, use, and disposal. Green Seal’s compass keeps us focused on the impacts that matter most, ensuring that Green Seal certification represents products and services that truly are safer for people and the planet.

Protecting Human Health

There are more than 80,000 chemicals registered for use in the U.S., and the great majority haven’t been assessed for their effects on human health.

Green Seal strictly limits chemicals that don’t belong in household or professional products, making it simple for people to make healthier, safer choices with confidence. In fact, Green Seal has often acted decades ahead of regulators and retailers – including, for example, prohibiting the neurotoxin methylene chloride and the carcinogen 1,4-dioxane as far back as 1993.

Carcinogens, mutagens, reproductive toxins, and common toxic ingredients such as phthalates, methanol, and bisphenol A (BPA) are strictly prohibited in Green Seal–certified products.

Minimizing Waste

The waste quadrant of Green Seal’s compass addresses the amount of recovered materials in a product as well as its performance, durability and recyclability. Green Seal-certified products use environmentally preferable packaging materials, include recycling instructions, and provide detailed directions for proper use to minimize product waste.

A foundational belief at Green Seal is that a product is not green if it doesn’t work as consumers expect it to. Green Seal’s functional performance criteria ensure that certified products perform as well as or better than conventional alternatives, avoiding waste from discarded products that fail to meet consumer expectations.

Ensuring Clean Water

This compass area assesses a product’s impacts on water bodies. Green Seal’s standards require aquatic biodegradability and prohibit chemicals that can harm or kill aquatic wildlife. In addition, Green Seal sets strict limits on bioaccumulating compounds to prevent the build-up of contaminants in fish and other organisms, which, in turn, helps protect humans from ingesting unsafe levels of chemicals from lower in the food chain.

Preserving the Climate

This quadrant aims to address a product’s global warming potential, smog formation, stratospheric ozone depletion, and energy use. Since preserving the climate is a multifaceted goal, many of Green Seal’s standard criteria for protecting human health, minimizing waste, and ensuring clean water also address this impact area. Limiting volatile organic compounds (VOCs), prohibiting ozone depleting compounds, and replacing virgin materials with recycled materials all preserve the climate and are relevant to categories as diverse as sanitary paper products and paints and coatings.

While VOCs are commonly linked with human health impacts, they are equally relevant to climate impacts because they interact with nitrous oxides in the atmosphere to form ozone — a greenhouse gas that can cause temperature increases when found in lower layers of the atmosphere. Limiting this class of chemicals is one way that Green Seal ensures certified products have lower environmental footprints than conventional alternatives. Pair this with requirements to reduce fossil fuel consumption and energy use, and it is clear how certified products can make a measurable difference in protecting the climate.

This is the first in a series of stories about Green Seal’s Compass.

CDC Confirms: Less is More When it Comes to Disinfecting

Posted on by Doug Gatlin

Last Summer, I warned of a dangerous trend of over-disinfecting buildings to reassure people about safety amid the pandemic – with minimal effectiveness at reducing virus spread and significant risks to people’s health from toxic chemicals.  Now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has updated its guidance to confirm that regular cleaning is preferable to disinfecting most of the time.  

When is disinfecting appropriate? The CDC now says to disinfect when someone confirmed to be infected with COVID-19 has been in the building within the past 24 hours.  

This is the same guidance Green Seal provided last Summer in our Safer Guidelines for COVID-19 Disinfecting for Schools and Workplaces, a free public resource that is now being implemented in more than 1 billion square feet of building space, including by Green Seal-certified cleaning services.  


Why Disinfecting Can Harm Instead of Help

It has been clear for some time that dousing a space in hazardous disinfecting chemicals won’t do much to prevent the spread of COVID-19. There are two main reasons for this: COVID-19 is much more likely to spread through person-to-person and airborne transmission than it is through surface-to-person transmission, and coronaviruses are relatively easy to kill on surfaces with plain old soap and water (or regular cleaning solutions).

There is a natural instinct to turn to the harshest chemicals available to attack a nasty virus, but the CDC’s new guidance should reassure us all that we can follow the science to avoid a dangerous reliance on disinfection. Doing so will avoid health risks ranging from cancer to serious respiratory disease – an especially grave risk for vulnerable populations such as children and the 1 in 13 Americans with asthma.

Not All Disinfectants are Created Equal 

For the times when disinfecting is appropriate, some disinfecting products are safer than others. Green Seal has curated U.S. EPA’s List N: Disinfectants for Coronavirus to help you identify safer ones.

Unlike other active ingredients commonly found in disinfectants, the active ingredients we recommend are not linked to asthma, cancer, endocrine disruption, DNA damage or skin irritation. Find our list of recommended ingredients and products here. 

A Trend in COVID-19 Cleaning Is Hazardous to Your Health

Posted on by Doug Gatlin

COVID-19 has precipitated a worrying cleaning trend that’s getting little airtime – excessive exposure to hazardous cleaning and disinfecting chemicals that itself can endanger health. To reassure people about the safety of indoor spaces during the pandemic, some workplaces are turning to unnecessary or even counterproductive cleaning and disinfection methods – a practice the Atlantic calls “hygiene theater.” 

The Best Disinfecting Tool is Accurate Information 

After physical distancing and mask-wearing, the best tool to combat COVID-19 is accurate information. We have good reason to believe that schools and workplaces don’t need to turn to hazardous methods to effectively clean and disinfect for COVID-19.  Consider that:

  • COVID-19 is most likely to spread through person-to-person and airborne transmission. In fact, no specific reports of transmission from surface-to-person had been recorded as of the July 9 publication of this World Health Organization report.
  • Coronaviruses, such as the COVID-19 virus, are relatively easy to kill on environmental surfaces.

While companies are increasingly asking for or advertising frequent disinfecting, as a general rule only high-touch surfaces (such as door handles and elevator buttons) should be frequently disinfected. Applying the product correctly is also important, as over-using a product will not be more effective at killing the COVID-19 virus and leads to waste and unnecessary chemical exposure.

Foggers Are Poor Choices For Schools and Offices

Application technologies like foggers are being heavily marketed as COVID-19 disinfecting solutions. These are a poor choice for school and office environments – they promote hazardous levels of chemical exposure without any benefit, as there is no evidence that they are more effective than traditional application methods. 

As some schools prepare to reopen, administrators should consider that disinfectants can include ingredients linked to asthma, cancer and endocrine disruption. Applying them in excess can create significant health risks for students and staff, including – ironically – serious respiratory disease.  

This is an especially grave risk for the 1 in 13 Americans with asthma – a group the CDC has identified as high-risk for COVID-19. Choosing safer proven-effective products, especially those that do not contain asthmagens or respiratory irritants, is critical for protecting high-risk groups. (Green Seal’s list of recommended safer COVID-19 disinfectants is here.)

Hazardous Chemicals May Do More Harm Than Good

Dousing a space in hazardous chemicals won’t necessarily better prevent the spread of COVID-19, but it will lead to significant health risks for those inside. The good news is that there are effective ways disinfect for COVID-19 while protecting health, safety and indoor air quality. 

Green Seal’s Safer COVID-19 Disinfecting Guidelines are a free resource for comprehensively protecting the health of building occupants and cleaning personnel during the pandemic.  And Green Seal’s public health lead Nina Hwang provides additional information on safe and effective disinfection here.

BMS: An Interview with Green Seal CEO Doug Gatlin

Posted on by Doug Gatlin

Green Seal partner Building Maintenance Service (BMS) sat down with Green Seal CEO Doug Gatlin to discuss green cleaning, sustainability in the janitorial industry, and why being Green Seal certified matters now more than ever.

WHY IS THIRD-PARTY VALIDATION IMPORTANT WHEN IT COMES TO SUSTAINABILITY IN THE CLEANING SERVICES INDUSTRY?

Green cleaning is a common term these days in the cleaning industry. The concept has been around for a long time.  However, in recent years, the sustainability community has actively embraced it.  They are better quantifying its impacts and promoting its value. Thanks to national benchmarks such as LEED as well as  Green Seal’s Green Cleaning Services Standard, green cleaning has become more common.  The knowledge of best practices has become more standardized within the industry.  Many facility teams, building managers, and office managers are utilizing some elements of green cleaning.  That said, green cleaning is a series of continuous improvement steps.  It is based on core principles that include training, site-specific plans, careful chemical management, and environmentally preferable purchasing.  In most cases we’ve seen, when a group says they’re implementing green cleaning, there are often major gaps in the implementation, the level of rigor, and the results.  A third-party certification process confirms the application of actual green cleaning procedures and benefits.

HOW DOES GS-42 CERTIFICATION BENEFIT JANITORIAL COMPANIES AND THEIR CLIENTS?

We’ve heard from cleaning companies of all sizes that simply the act of applying for certification is beneficial.  In completing the checklists, you can quickly identify gaps in what you were doing, assumptions you made, and communications that should have been developed that never were. It helps you get a bird’s-eye view of your own business.  During the process, you’re speaking with a facilities management expert.  This person can help you dive into the best practices of green cleaning and the unique ways to develop your site-specific plans.

Commercial properties that choose certified green cleaning services attract higher quality tenants. Consumers today are demanding a higher level of social and environmental consciousness. Green cleaning delivers on those priorities by reducing the building’s environmental impact and promoting the health and wellbeing of building occupants – as well as some of society’s unsung heroes: custodial workers.

Building occupant productivity is also a benefit. Occupants of green office buildings report three fewer sick days each year and a 5% increase in overall productivity.  This has a direct connection to indoor air quality. In fact, a 2018 study from the U.S. Green Building Council found that 80% of green building occupants say the enhanced air quality improves their happiness and productivity.

HOW DO CLEANING CHEMICAL CHOICES IMPACT BUILDING OCCUPANT HEALTH?

VOCs are one of the most common hazards in today’s buildings.  They can cause allergic responses, exacerbate asthma, or other respiratory issues, cause headaches, eye irritation, or dizziness, prevent us from feeling our best – or, at worst, send people to the emergency room.

Young people, sick people, pregnant women, and the tens of millions of Americans who suffer from asthma are especially at risk from exposure.  One in seven cases of adult asthma can be attributed to the use of spray cleaners.

Cleaning professionals are on the front lines of these impacts. A large body of research has found that both domestic and professional cleaning work is associated with a higher risk of asthma and other respiratory issues. In fact, the first long term study on the topic recently found that cleaning with conventional products is as bad for your lungs as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day over 10-20 years.

The good news is that you easily mitigate these risks by simply switching to green-certified products.

HOW DO YOU DETERMINE SUSTAINABILITY STANDARDS FOR CLEANING CHEMICALS? 

We start by looking at function. It’s important for us to understand the intended function of a product.  In many cases there are several.  This helps us understand why a certain active chemical ingredient may be necessary or beneficial. Once we understand those two pieces, we conduct a marketing review by looking at safety data sheets or European regulations, which frequently home in on chemicals of concern before the U.S. does.  We identify the known toxic chemicals that are in most cleaning products.  Then we look at the products that have been designed without those toxic chemicals.  We independently validate that these products still function to industry standards.

By focusing on those leadership products, we’re able to craft a profile that looks at everything from the raw materials and production processes to the formula and the end of life of the product.  We zero in on the best opportunities for reducing environmental and human health impacts. We strive to create standards that are achievable for the top 20 percent of the industry. As the industry catches, we review and increase the performance thresholds where it makes sense, so that the Green Seal mark continues to set a leadership benchmark.

DO GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS (OR LACK THEREOF) IMPACT HOW YOU DEFINE YOUR STANDARDS, AND IF SO, HOW?

 We rely on a number of authoritative lists to screen product formulations for chemicals of concern. These lists range from those set by international bodies, such as the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s list of carcinogens, to those set by professional associations, such as the Association of Occupational and Environmental Clinics’s list of asthmagens. In between, of course, are federal and state lists by U.S. EPA and California.

By referencing multiple sources, we ensure that we have the most health-protective standards based on the latest science. Green Seal’s standard development is guided by the precautionary principle – if there is a lack of full scientific certainty on the suspected health and environmental health hazards of a chemical, we prohibit it until it’s proven to be safe. That’s why commonly found toxins like methylene chloride and 1,4-dioxane – which have only recently spurred widespread public concern in the U.S. – have been prohibited in Green Seal-certified products for decades.

WHAT IS THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE YOU HAVE SEEN FOR CLEANING SERVICE PROVIDERS TO ADOPT GS-42 STANDARDS?

We see employee turnover and maintaining buy-in as two of the biggest challenges.  Green cleaning itself is not intuitive.  It’s a careful, conscious process of monitoring, setting baselines, and understanding opportunities for where chemicals are unnecessary or overused, and shifting to better practices.  It is a continuous improvement game.  It works best with the buy-in of your teams—in particular, custodial managers, who can lead a culture shift.

In some cases, building occupants need to be educated about green cleaning.  We’re conditioned to think that a bleach smell or a lavender fragrance signifies “clean.” It can also be hard to overcome the misconception that constant cleaning is beneficial.  Many times, it’s counterproductive, and it unnecessarily increases chemical exposure.

It’s important to convey the concept of green cleaning to the building occupants. They must find value in this new way of working with non-fragrance products, in restricting cleaning schedules to off-hours, and in restricting the use of disinfectants and sanitizers to high-touch surfaces. But increasingly, we’ve seen that building tenants and occupants are aware of the benefits.  They are requesting green cleaning, even if they don’t yet understand all the details.

WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST CONCERN AS IT RELATES TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF THE CLEANING INDUSTRY?

Water use. The more we can encourage the shipping of concentrated products, the more we can reduce the unnecessary emissions of shipping water.  There’s an emerging concept in Europe where water itself is not required as frequently in cleaning.  That could be interesting in the future as well.

We’re also concerned about the overuse of disinfecting products because of the potential for the development of microbial resistance to these products.

HOW DO YOU SEE SUSTAINABILITY IN THE CLEANING INDUSTRY CHANGING OVER THE NEXT 5-10 YEARS? 

Green cleaning will be better understood. We’re going to see reductions in water use, more careful application of chemical-based products, and a shift to more evidence and quantification of green cleaning and effective cleaning.  There will be more demand from building occupants for third-party certified services and products that protect and promote health and wellness.  You can already see that in popular shared workspaces like WeWork – they offer snacks, coffee, and spaces that only use green products.

From Building Maintenance Service Blog – November 7, 2019. Contact us to learn more about BMS’s Sustainability initiatives, including our Green Seal (GS-42) certification.

30 Years Strong: A Look at Green Seal and Ecolabelling

Posted on by Doug Gatlin

If you follow us on social media, you probably already know that Green Seal is celebrating its 30th anniversary this month. Because anniversaries are a natural time to reflect, we’ve been looking back at our history and the role Green Seal has played in the wider story of the sustainability movement. We’ve also been digging into our archives to unearth public service announcements and news clips from our early years (preppy outfits included), and to reveal key moments where we catalyzed economy-wide shifts toward safer, greener products.  

You can see it all in our new interactive timeline, here. 

It is stunning to remember that just 50 years ago, there were no legal limits on how much pollution companies could dump into communities. Then, a burning river, a major oil spill, and growing unease about worsening air quality spurred a nationwide uprising that prompted the creation of the EPA and an era of environmental regulation. 

This combination of public demand and government action drove big strides in cleaning up some of the heaviest sources of toxic air and water pollution in America. But by 1990, it was clear that government regulation alone could not adequately address critical global challenges like climate change, water shortages and natural resource depletion. The world needed a new era of action by businesses, institutions and consumers on everything from energy and water efficiency to greening the supply chain, to creating healthier, greener spaces in which to work, learn and play.  

To meet these needs, environmental leaders largely turned their attention toward voluntary market-transformation initiatives that have created the basis of a new brand of environmentalism – Sustainability.  

When Green Seal launched in 1989, there was nothing like it in the United States: a non-profit organization committed to independently verifying sustainable products. Environmental movement leader Denis Hayes signed on as our first Chair and CEO, two decades after organizing the first Earth Day. The New York Times, the L.A. Times, Time Magazine and other major outlets covered Green Seal’s launch as a critical moment in the burgeoning green consumer movement – and it was.  

Thirty years later, Green Seal has driven transformational change in the definition of and demand for sustainable products.  Each year, Green Seal standards and certified products save millions of metric tons of C02 emissions; hundreds of thousands of pounds of VOC pollution; and half a billion pounds of organochloride pollution – and that’s just a partial list.  

More than 7 million children reduce their exposure to toxic chemicals and asthma triggers every day because they attend schools cleaned with Green Seal certified cleaning products. And more than 120 million square feet of office space, hospitals and other commercial spaces are significantly safer for occupants because of Green Seal’s paints and coatings standard.  

The sustainability movement today has evolved beyond product ecolabeling to new frontiers like zero-waste, circularity, social equity and health and wellness – all areas Green Seal is capturing in our new standards, programs and initiatives.  

Even as we appreciate all that we have achieved in 30 years, anniversaries are also a time to look ahead. As we consider our path for the next 30 years, we are keeping some key values in mind:

We are doubling down on making it simple for consumers to make healthier, greener choices. We will be even more clear that Green Seal-certified means no carcinogens, no mutagens, no reproductive toxins, and a deep-dive look at the product’s sustainability from raw materials extraction all the way to packaging.  

We are invested in a new, service-oriented model that recognizes that none of our achievements would be possible without our partners.  It is their commitment to and investment in green chemistry and innovation that transforms our ambitious standards from an academic exercise into scientific breakthroughs that make their way into the products people use every day.  

We are committed to expanding our impact in the marketplace. From our Formula Facts ingredient labels, to our Environmental Innovation program, to powerful new partnerships in the works, we will continue to invest in market transformation initiatives that bring Green Seal’s certified products, services and expertise to an even wider audience.

As we look back at where we started, one thing is clear: The ecolabeling movement that Green Seal pioneered is flourishing today, driven by a rising tide of consumer demand for more sustainable products, especially among those who are now steering the economy. A full 78 percent of Millennials believe sustainability is important and say they make sustainable choices – higher than any generation before them. 

Millennials face a very different challenge to that of the 1989 green consumer: they have too many ecolabels to navigate. Today, there are meaningless ecolabels that allow companies to self-certify, and single-attribute ecolabels that examine only one product feature and ignore other significant environmental impacts. Thirty years after we started this movement, people still want to know what is good from an authority they can trust.  And that’s still Green Seal.  

We’ll be celebrating key moments in our history and the impressive achievements of our partners for the rest of the year. Be sure to tune in on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Thank you for joining us on the journey to a healthier, greener planet. We’re looking forward to the amazing things we can do together over the next 30 years – starting now. 

Will CA Transparency Law Spur Safer Cleaning Products?

Posted on by Doug Gatlin

Growing public demand for ingredient transparency across the marketplace is prompting regulators to require manufacturers and retailers to publicly communicate the ingredients in everything from personal care and baby products to cosmetics and cleaning products.  

Starting this January, cleaning product manufacturers for the first time will have to post their product ingredients online to comply with a new ingredient disclosure law in California. As the nation’s leading environmental certification organization, Green Seal has always required manufacturers to fully disclose their product ingredients to us to qualify for certification. 

We believe that public disclosure of product ingredients can empower purchasers to choose healthier, safer products. But we also know that reading a long and complicated list of ingredients without context can be confusing or even misleading, defeating the purpose of ingredient transparency.

Formula Facts Make Disclosure Easier

To help both purchasers and companies get the most out of the new ingredient transparency law, we recently launched Formula Facts, an ingredient label program that makes it easier for leading manufacturers to provide clear, accurate and meaningful ingredient communications.

But will disclosure finally prompt companies to weed out the stew of toxic chemicals that lurk in most cleaning products?  Here is what we have learned about the benefits and challenges of ingredient transparency over decades of working with the nation’s leading cleaning product manufacturers. 

1.       Manufacturers don’t know all their product ingredients.

Ingredient disclosure is made harder by the fact that cleaning product manufacturers often don’t have access to information about some of their ingredients. That’s because they buy their raw materials from other suppliers who keep their formulas confidential.  Manufacturers know what the raw material will do in the cleaning product (for example: it’s a solvent), but they may not know the specific identity of the active ingredient or whether there are any additives.

Think of it like making homemade cookies with bakery-bought chocolate chips. You know that the chips will taste delicious in your cookie, but you don’t know where the chocolate was sourced or whether any ingredients were added to keep them tasting fresh.

When Green Seal evaluates a cleaning product for certification, we work with the company’s raw material suppliers to track down every ingredient in that product. Because so many of the ingredients in a finished cleaning product are contained within the raw materials and hidden from view to the manufacturer, it will be essential for manufacturers to convince their suppliers to disclose their ingredients — even when they involve confidential business information.  This will only help promote safer product formulations.

2. Some chemicals are hard to detect.

In addition to ingredients that are intentionally added, cleaning products can contain byproducts and other impurities that are unintentionally created during a chemical reaction.One example is 1,4-dioxane, a carcinogen found as a reaction by-product in ethoxylated substances, which are often used as surfactants in cleaning products.

The state laws require manufacturers to identify certain byproducts and other impurities that are associated with harmful health and environmental impacts. But this information can be hard for manufacturers to find because there is no requirement for raw materials suppliers to disclose the byproducts and impurities in their products. These chemicals also tend to be present at much lower concentrations that are harder to detect. Green Seal always screens for byproducts and impurities when we evaluate a cleaning product for certification to fully understand the product’s composition. Often, this process alerts manufacturers to the presence of chemicals they weren’t aware were in their products.Identifying these chemicals is the first step to weeding them out – another win for ingredient disclosure. Communicating product ingredients can help companies increase credibility and build trust with their customers. However, even the clearest ingredient labels can be difficult to decipher for anyone but a toxicologist.

3.       “Chemicals of Concern” are constantly changing.

The ingredient labeling laws require companies to clearly communicate whether their products contain any “chemicals of concern,” which include known carcinogens, reproductive toxins, and other ingredients harmful to human health.  But this task isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. There are dozens of different lists of chemicals of concern, including 22 referenced by the California law.  What’s more, the lists are constantly updated as new studies and information become available about the potential health impacts of the chemicals available in the marketplace.

In order to comply with the laws, manufacturers will have to track ongoing changes to each of these lists and update their ingredient labels accordingly.  In this way, the disclosure laws will force companies to pay close attention to new findings about the health risks of common chemicals.

4.      Ingredients have aliases.

The laws require cleaning product producers to list ingredients in descending order of weight, but even something as simple as communicating an ingredient’s name can be complicated. There are more than 2,000 chemicals used in conventional cleaning products – but an estimated 10,000 names for those chemicals.  For example, the carcinogenic byproduct 1,4-dioxane goes by a number of aliases, including Diethylene Oxide, Diethylene Dioxide, Dioxane, para-Dioxane, 1,4-Dioxacyclohexane, and Diethylene Ether, to name just a few.

Companies will have to follow the states’ regulatory guidelines for choosing the most appropriate names for their ingredients.  However, variations in naming conventions are likely to continue to cause confusion and uncertainty for consumers, who can’t be certain whether the ingredients they are screening for are hidden under aliases.  

5.       Communication won’t do the job of certification.

Communicating product ingredients can help companies increase credibility and build trust with their customers. However, even the clearest ingredient labels can be difficult to decipher for anyone but a toxicologist. Long lists of chemicals can be overwhelming and anxiety-inducing even when the chemicals are harmless.  Consumers can’t be expected to know whether chemical combinations are producing harmful byproducts or whether an ingredient that is considered a carcinogen in aerosol form is benign in liquid form.

When reviewing a product for certification, Green Seal always starts with ingredient disclosure – but that by itself does not translate to safer, greener products.  Disclosure precedes a scientific analysis of the formula information, and then the essential work of filtering out products that don’t meet strict health, safety and performance benchmarks. 

Reputable ecolabel standards stay far ahead of public awareness about the health risks of toxic chemicals.  For example, commonly found toxins like methylene chloride and 1,4-dioxane – which have only recently spurred widespread public concern – have been prohibited in Green Seal-certified products for decades. While ingredient communication itself is not sufficient to transform the market, these requirements often encourage manufacturers to move toward safer product formulations – in effect taking their first step towards environmental certification. With ingredient labels that consumers can access and understand, transparency will continue to spur innovation and guide the economy towards a healthier, cleaner future.

Emerging Wellness Trends Advance Green Hospitality

Posted on by Doug Gatlin

What’s that smell? Deodorizer? Bleach? When you enter your hotel room for the night, you shouldn’t have to worry that the air you breathe will provoke headaches, allergies, or asthma. That’s the mindset of a growing generation of consumers who view sustainability as inextricably linked to human health – and who support hotels that do the same.

“It’s a generational shift, in my opinion,” said Glenn Hasek, publisher and editor of Green Lodging News. “Gone are the days when you had travelers who grew up smoking cigarettes and breathing smog in dirty cities. Travelers are increasingly interested in experiencing a healthy stay and being offered health and wellness options, from spa experiences at high-end hotels to something as simple as a bike sharing program that offers the opportunity to see the city on wheels instead of with a carbon-emitting vehicle.”

For the lodging industry, this shift means guests increasingly treat travel as a chance to demonstrate their commitment to health and sustainability, rather than escape from it. Figures from the Global Wellness Institute show wellness tourism growing twice as fast as tourism overall, reaching a $639 billion market in 2017. And contrary to popular belief, relatively few wellness trips are to destination spas or meditation retreats. Nearly 90 percent are regular leisure or business trips where travelers choose to participate in wellness experiences.

“Having green-friendly practices and wellness services and amenities are no longer a ‘nice to have,’ they are an expectation, particularly from the luxury traveler,” said Dant Hirsh, general manager of the Dominick Hotel, an independent luxury hotel located in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood. The company underscored its commitment to health and sustainability by earning a Green Seal Bronze certification in 2018, meeting rigorous benchmarks in areas including minimizing waste, preventing pollution, conserving energy, managing water resources and purchasing greener products. For wellness travelers, the Dominick offers partnerships with several local fitness boutiques and an on-site fitness center with Peloton bikes, and it is revamping its spa with updated suites and custom amenities that appeal to the fitness and wellness traveler.

However, hotels don’t need to offer expensive spa services to facilitate wellness for their guests, Hasek said. Simple steps like providing maps of local trails and eco-conscious soaps and amenities also contribute to a healthier stay.

Several health-related features already are mainstream at hotels worldwide. According to Greenview’s 2018 Green Lodging Trends Report, the majority of hotels now use low-VOC or VOC-free paints in renovations and additions, provide eco-conscious amenities for guests, and conduct annual carbon monoxide and radon testing. A growing number of hotels also are evaluating suppliers in human rights areas, providing portable air purifiers, and designating more than 90% of guestrooms as non-smoking.

Hasek said hotels increasingly are embedding health and wellness programs in their overall sustainability strategies, as they go hand in hand with initiatives already underway on the properties. At the Dominick Hotel, for example, equipping rooms with iPads cuts down on paper use and also allows the company to offer guests custom digital workouts.

The most successful health and sustainability programs often have staff-wide buy-in, and hotels that involve associates in their green and wellness initiatives report positive culture shifts and happier employees. At the Westin Bonaventure Hotel and Suites, a Green Seal Silver certified property in Los Angeles, associates formed a “green team” comprising representatives from each department who champion specific sustainability initiatives. Some were so inspired by the mission that they began implementing the practices at home as well, said Claudia Lambaren, the hotel’s senior sales and marketing coordinator.

Today, Westin Bonaventure associates are integral to projects including targeting zero-waste in the cafeteria, implementing a water reclamation system in the laundry facility, installing trash sorting and recycling bins throughout the property, purchasing from sustainable local vendors, recycling unused amenities through the Clean the World program, and offering business customers Westin Clutter-Free Meetings with socially conscious amenities and green features including energy efficient light bulbs, double-sided meeting pads and water pitchers instead of bottled water.

Hotel executives stress that their sustainability and wellness programs reach both to the front and the back of the house. At the Dominick, employees enjoy discounts with neighborhood fitness partners and healthy meal options at the staff cafeteria. “The employees are the heart of the house, so we strive to ensure that any benefit we launch at the hotel benefits both guests and associates.”

The Sofitel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills, a Green Seal Silver certified hotel, offers a wellness food section in their cafeteria and a free charging station for employees who drive electric vehicles. The hotel also hosts awareness campaigns employees to participate in throughout the year and celebrates Earth Hour, Earth Day, World Food Day and other national days.

“We emphasize the fact that our daily gestures have a real impact on our community, and that going green also involves a social responsibility,” said Cecile Sandral-Lasbordes, the hotel’s marketing and public relations manager. The hotel’s “green team” is dedicated to using sustainable, recyclable, energy efficient and non-toxic items throughout every aspect of the hotel’s day-to-day operations, and ensures a minimum of 50 percent of the hotel’s food purchases are from local or regional vendors. The hotel also implements a WATCH program that trains employees to recognize signs of child sexual exploitation and coordinate with local partners and law enforcement to respond.

With their Green Seal certifications, all of the hotels committed to using cleaning products that are free of harmful chemicals that can exacerbate asthma and other health conditions, a measure that is especially beneficial to cleaning associates. In fact, employers that prioritize employee health often find they are rewarded with more productive associates who take fewer sick days and cost less to insure.

“Healthier employees cost less in the long run,” said Hasek. He pointed to the innovate, self-insured employee healthcare model developed by Rosen Hotels & Resorts in Florida. The company’s health offering includes its own medical center for employees and their dependents, same-day appointments, low premiums and a strong focus on preventative health and wellness (a mandatory stretching program for housekeeping staff and other employees prone to musculoskeletal problems reduced injuries by 25 percent). The plan has already saved the company $340 million and contributed to a low annual employee turnover rate of less than 15 percent, compared to the industry-wide average of 60 percent.

Hotels are also seeing sales and marketing benefits from their health and sustainability investments as both leisure and business guests make green a requirement. “Questions regarding our green practices and wellness benefits are standard from decision-makers at companies that are looking to hold a group program here or assign a corporate account,” said the Dominick Hotel. “Having a strong stake in these initiatives gives us a competitive advantage.”

At the Westin Bonaventure, Lambaren said many of the hotel’s customers include green recycling requirements in their proposal requests. “We have seen an increase with requests for information, and we have had several groups stay with us because of our green efforts,” she said.

At the Sofitel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills, the hotel’s green and wellness standards align the property with the meetings criteria of prime businesses, Sandral-Lasbordes said. “Big corporations and technology pioneers like Google or Microsoft have substantial environmental charters in place and want their partners to be the same.”

But the ultimate business benefit of the hotel’s health and sustainability initiatives, says Sandral-Lasbordes, is the engagement of employees. “The excitement and satisfaction they portray when helping the community and the planet is beyond rewarding.”

Editors Note: This article was reprinted with permission from the Hotel Business

Updated Paper Waste Standards Deliver Big Environmental Wins

Posted on by Green Seal

It’s a simple but harsh truth: America has a paper waste problem

Americans throw out 68 million tons of paper each year – that’s 417 pounds per person. Until this year, the U.S. could handle this immense volume by shipping one-third of our waste to China, but due to new Chinese policies, almost all of that refuse is now staying in the US and going straight to our landfills. The paper that we recycle each day shouldn’t be sitting in landfills when it can be processed and used to create new products – but it will continue to pile up unless we rise to the challenge by choosing paper products made from recycled material.

Facility Managers and Procurement Pros: You have an important role to play

Lower your building’s environmental footprint and help all of us tackle the paper waste challenge by making greener purchasing choices, like choosing Green Seal certified sanitary paper products to make sure that you’re getting the highest percentages of post-consumer recycled content.

This simple choice will immediately lower the environmental impact of your building operations and clearly demonstrate a facility-wide commitment to solving our national paper waste issue and to conserving precious natural resources – our forests. Green Seal has made it simple for you to make the greenest choice because we’ve done the hard work. We’ve conducted extensive research to ensure that our standards accurately reflect the highest levels of leadership on today’s market: the greenest feasible fiber content, a chlorine-free papermaking process, a low energy and water-use manufacturing process, ingredients that are significantly safer for human health, and verified performance that users appreciate.

Over the last 20 years, more and more manufacturers have stood up to our challenge – and undergone our thorough certification process – to prove that their sanitary paper products meet each of the 12 major best practices that Green Seal has identified as key impacts within the product lifecycle. The results of your greener paper purchases can be ballparked with help from the Environmental Paper Network. According to Portland’s Sustainability At Work program, For a 120-person office, over one year, your company will save 8,700 trees, 1 million pounds of emissions (the equivalent of removing 100 cars from the roads), and 5.6 million gallons of water. Those green brags are easy wins that you can include in your annual sustainability metrics report.

Continuous Improvement in Environmental Benchmarking

To make sure that we’re supporting today’s environmental challenges, Green Seal implemented a major review of the GS-1 standard, and today we’re relaunching it as Edition 6.2.

With direct feedback from manufacturers and end users, the standard is now more in-line with industry practices. We’ve removed the unintentional barriers to certification, expanded number of pathways for compliance, improved the readability of the standard, and maintained the stringent level of protections for human health and our environment. With these improvements, we are now off to the races, setting the stage for a major shift in this industry. With feasible leadership standards, Green Seal is incentivizing higher rates of landfill diversion and certifying a wider selection of bath tissue, paper napkins, tray liners, and other sanitary paper products that we use every day. Purchasing Green Seal-certified products is a simple choice that can have tremendous impact on our environment. From facility managers to restaurant owners to everyday consumers, making simple changes in our purchasing habits can help significantly reduce waste and stabilize the U.S. recycled paper market. We urge you to join us in making this change, because it’s up to us to reduce our waste footprint and ensure that we have a healthy planet for generations to come.

HSC Report: How Schools are Keeping Kids Healthier, Safer

Posted on by Doug Gatlin

A new report out this week from the Healthy Schools Campaign shows that a growing number of school officials across the country are choosing environmentally certified cleaning products. This is great news, because as the Healthy Schools Campaign CEO, Rochelle Davis, points out, “We know that how schools approach cleaning says a lot about how they value their students, staff, and the communities where they are located.”

We at Green Seal couldn’t agree more. Environmentally certified products keep kids safer and healthier. It is why we dedicate so much time and attention to developing the most rigorous testing for cleaning products and services, and Green Seal is proud to be the leading environmental certification of cleaning products and services in schools.

According to the 2018 National Education Facilities Cleaning Survey, Green Seal was identified as the top third-party certifier for green cleaning products. The report shone a spotlight on Maryland’s Howard County Public School System (HCPSS), which went above and beyond to create a world-class building environment that puts health first. HCPSS decided to get Green Seal (GS-42) certified to make sure that they achieve their mission of making their schools a healthy place to work and learn. To receive this certification from Green Seal, they implemented their own rigorous rating system that monitors the health and cleanliness of each building in the district. They also made sure all of HCPSS’ equipment, cleaning tools, standard operating procedures and staff training complied with each requirement in the Cleaning Service Standard. It’s no coincidence that a school system where cleaning is seen as a health priority rather than just as a housekeeping duty, Green Seal is the certification of choice.

Green cleaning isn’t just an environmental issue. It’s a public health issue. And where our children are concerned, that can’t be said enough. Moving forward, I hope more businesses and public sector leaders see the necessity for Green Seal certifying more schools and spaces for children, families, staff, and the community. We’ve always been honored to play a role in keeping schools healthy, safe and clean for children. This study just proves it.