Interserve Group Limited, the international support services, construction and equipment services group, has adopted a series of improvements to the way its cleaning business runs that have resulted in more than 270,000 bottles per year being saved from landfill.

The company employs more than 24,000 cleaners across its Support Services business who are based at clients ranging from supermarket chains through to small private businesses, the NHS and Government offices.  The company’s cleaners use roughly £17m worth of products per year ensuring that clients’ premises are in the best possible condition. Contracts, such as the NHS, require the highest professional standards.

Janet Park, Director of Cleaning, overhauled operations to dramatically improve efficiency, reduce costs and improve the firm’s environmental impact. Two changes included installing dilution-controlled cleaning and cutting down on the variety of products used to create economies of scale. Janet said: “We changed from a glug-glug approach in which our cleaners were using thousands of products from 1,800 different product lines to a rational approach using one system comprising four products.”

The company has further reduced consumption by installing product dispensing systems ensuring each cleaner uses the correct quantity of product.

Janet said: “We install the dilution systems at all of our major clients free of charge and ship highly concentrated supplies to each site to fill the machine. “For our smaller sites, we supply a similar system using dilution-controlled bottles. Being colour coded the system is not only simple to use but is also safer because there is no-longer any risk of touching undiluted chemicals.  

“As is so often the case, moving to a rational, efficient process not only saves everyone money, but also has an extremely positive impact on the environment.”  To further underline Interserve’s green credentials, the cleaning business now sources its washroom paper products from recycled fibres.