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Each year we celebrate Earth Day, reflecting on its beauty and marveling at its continued evolution. This year’s theme is Our Power, Our Planet™. A reminder that environmental progress doesn’t depend entirely on policies. Instead, it’s built on the daily choices of the communities we serve.
Earth Day is a reminder to serve the world around us and protect our environment. In the commercial cleaning industry, there’s often a wide gap between what’s claimed and what’s true.
Green Cleaning
When you walk into a supply store or visit a cleaning supply website, you’ll find products that have green labels, sustainable logos and words like “eco-friendly, natural, and sustainable.” These labels are meant to reassure that these products are safe for the environment, but what do they actually mean?
Greenwashing is the act of making a product, policy, or activity appear to be more environmentally friendly than it really is. For example, a cleaning bottle might say recyclable, however the formula inside may contain hazardous ingredients. Or a product might carry a vague self-declared certification.
A Different Approach
So how do you cut through the noise?
Real sustainability in cleaning isn’t simply a label but instead it’s about what the product does.
Doing More with Less
Consider a product that cleans more efficiently per ounce, that means you’ll use less of it. A concentrated formula that delivers on its ratio means fewer containers, less water and less plastic. Which in turn results in fewer truck deliveries, and less chemical going down the drain.
Packaging designed from the ground up to be lighter and made more efficient helps reduce waste before a drop is ever dispensed.
This is performance-driven sustainability, or an operational approach that links environmental, social, and economic goals directly to measurable, verified outcomes rather than vague commitments. Environmental benefit shouldn’t be declared by a label, but instead should be the natural consequence of a product that genuinely works better.
Understanding Chemistry
Another form of greenwashing relates to listed ingredients. Conventional cleaning products have historically relied on chemicals like butyl solvents. These chemicals are great for cleaning but come with a cost to human health and the environment. Many reformulations simply swap one problematic ingredient for another less hazardous one.
Progress can be found in removing hazardous ingredients not because of regulations but because safer, more effective chemistry exists. That means designing formulas that are biodegradable and meet independent third-party standards like Green Seal certification.
Packaging
The cleaning industry ships tons of products daily and can generate enormous amounts of plastic waste each year. In 2018 it was reported that over 14.5 million tons of plastic tonnage was wasted that included bags, sacks and wraps; other packaging; polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles and jars; high-density polyethylene (HDPE) natural bottles; and other containers.
Creating flexible packages that dramatically reduce plastic use, leveraging refillable systems, using closed-loop dispensing that eliminates single-use containers can all help reduce environmental impact. Lighter, flexible packaging also means lighter shipping and less fuel burned moving products from facility to facility.
What Our Power, Our Planet Actually Looks Like
This Earth Day message is about taking responsibility to create change. Change happens through the accumulated decisions of real people.
Whether it’s a facility manager, procurement team, sustainability officer or the custodial workers who clean daily, choosing the products, systems and training implemented has real power to affect change.
Choosing products based on verified performance and independently certified sources rather than packaging aesthetics is an exercise of power. Demanding transparency about the chemistry used, packaging, and environmental impact from suppliers is an exercise of power.
Greenwashing works when purchasers don’t ask the hard questions.
Questions Worth Asking Your Cleaning Product Supplier
What independent certifications does this product carry, and who issued them?
How does the dilution rate compare to industry benchmarks?
What hazardous ingredients have been removed from the formula, and what have replaced them?
What does the full packaging lifecycle look like from manufacturing to disposal?
Does the dilution control system prevent overuse, or is it largely manual?
Learn more about Buckeye’s sustainability commitment here: Buckeye's Sustainability Commitment
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