The British Cleaning Council and members write monthly columns for both Cleaning and Maintenance and Tomorrow’s Cleaning magazines. You can read recent columns below.
To read the columns as they originally appeared, please visit https://cleaningmag.com/issues and https://www.tomorrowscleaning.com/back-issues
We Clean, We Care – a badge of pride
By Jim Melvin, Chairman of the British Cleaning Council (BCC) (This article was first published in Tomorrow’s Cleaning in April)
At the Manchester Cleaning Show recently, the BCC was delighted to launch the new ‘We Clean, We Care’ slogan.
We offered free badges emblazoned with the slogan to attendees at the show, with the idea that cleaning and hygiene employees could pin one to their lapel with pride, as they go about their work.
A new logo featuring the slogan is available to the wider cleaning and hygiene industry for use on their websites, in marketing materials and social media.
This is the latest stage in our campaign for wider recognition for the vital work that cleaning and hygiene staff do. It is for the benefit of the industry and its staff as a whole, not just the BCC or our members.
The slogan reflects the pride and professionalism that the sector’s skilled personnel have in their crucial role of keeping people healthy, safe and well.
While recognition of this vital role has improved over the pandemic, there are still people outside the sector who have totally the wrong idea about what we do.
Our campaign aims to address outdated and inaccurate ideas about the industry and raise awareness of the essential, key and skilled work done by sector personnel. It builds on the lobbying work we have been doing and continue to do.
Over the next few months, we be reiterating to national and local government, civil servants, MPs and the media that the role of cleaning and hygiene personnel is frontline and essential to keeping key workers and the public healthy, safe and well and that sector staff are skilled, professional and trained to a high standard.
Will we also spell out how our industry has been a key component and absolutely vital in the fight against the Covid pandemic and will continue to be essential in returning to normality safely and hygienically, as well as being prepared for and helping to stop any future variant or pandemic.
We will also highlight to everyone how important the industry is to the UK economy. Worth almost £59bn, according to latest figures, it employs 1.47m people, making it one of the ten biggest in the country. Therefore we fully deserve to be taken seriously.
Other important points include the importance of innovation, science and technological advancement which remain key elements of the cleaning and hygiene industry.
For example, the increasing use of robots and cobots over the last two years and the use of scientific methods such as swabbing to confirm cleanliness and GEO fencing to ensure staff are safe.
The development of an Apprenticeship levy funded, industrywide accredited training programme and apprenticeship offers an opportunity to counter misconceptions about our industry being low-skilled as it offers educational opportunities for sector staff, helping develop their skills and providing an attractive career path for new entrants.
The Innovation and people skills development will allow us to reach both long and short term strategies to make this great industry a career of choice. We want Government to work with us to develop a long-term strategy to make the industry more appealing for new entrants.
Our campaign also calls on the Government to review the Immigration Act requirements, as they have with other industries, to allow non-UK based workers to join the sector.
However, and let me be extremely clear as it is absolutely vital, the industry needs to work together in a collective effort if we are ever to win the full recognition our sector and staff deserve. This is a base point pre-requisite.
We encourage businesses and organisations in the sector, and staff, to adopt the ‘We Care, We Clean’ slogan for themselves in the hope it will help educate clients, customers, colleagues and government. Please use the slogan as a badge of pride.
Pandemic drives international growth in wheelie bin washing
By Daniel Coulon, Director of the National Association of Wheeled Bin Washers (NAWBW). (This article was first published in Cleaning and Maintenance in April)
The UK has been at the forefront of professional bin cleaning for over 30 years.
The first professional domestic wheelie bin cleaning industry was established here in the UK back in the early nineties, then a few years later the first commercial bin cleaning sector developed.
The UK’s bin cleaning industry has now been used as a template for international bin cleaning services across the world including in the United States of America, Australia, Europe, and Africa.
These overseas bin cleaning companies source their mobile bin cleaning equipment from here in the UK designed and manufactured by small British companies.
With the onset of the Covid-19 virus and the pandemic then spreading across the UK, we saw a huge increase in demand for professional wheelie bin cleaning from within the UK, especially from commercial companies and organisations including our national health service, schools and local authorities, all contracting local and national wheelie bin cleaning services to come and wash their commercial bins onsite on a regular basis.
As the UK comes out of all Covid restrictions, the clean-up begins to make sure this virus is wiped away for good and to prevent this sort of thing from happening ever again.
To help with the fight against germs and bacteria, a new market has developed here in the UK for the supply of static bin washing equipment which can be manufactured and installed into facilities such as hospitals, airports and factories for facilities management companies, NHS Trusts, and waste contractors, allowing their staff to wash their own bin stock onsite more regularly.
The National Association of Wheeled Bin Washers (NAWBW) is proud to announce that two of the British-based companies are leading the way and filling the demand for this sort of bespoke cleaning equipment are members of our association.
Morclean Limited and Green Cleen (UK) Limited are ensuring that the UK retains our position as global leaders in the manufacturing of bespoke bin cleaning solutions as they are both now manufacturing these customised bin cleaning machines to clients across the UK.
Customers including ISS Medicare, Veolia, Dundee Council, and Skanska and are now shipping these machines across Europe, the USA and even to the Middle East for countries like the UAE, which has been watching the growing market here in the UK and now wish to install similar equipment.
In keeping with companies trying to reach their net-zero policies, Morclean and Green Cleen (UK) have designed and developed their bespoke bin cleaning equipment to run off three-phase electric instead of the conventional diesel and petrol engines commonly used with this sort of equipment.
Not only does this reduce pollution but allows these machines to be installed inside factories and similar buildings.
They have been built with integrated multi-stage water recycling systems reducing the amount of water required in the bin cleaning process whilst only using 100 per cent bio-degradable bespoke chemicals which eliminate 99.0 per cent of all known germs and bacteria whilst being environmentally friendly.
The NAWBW is still the only recognised bin cleaning association in the world which is why we are used by companies and authorities both here in the UK and overseas for advice on the correct legislation and guidance for the bin cleaning industry.
The association aims to continue supporting innovative companies developing the equipment used for bin cleaning, and our members who use the equipment as part of their cleaning services, whilst educating and advising businesses, organisations, and authorities about bin hygiene.