Kill Germs While Protecting the Environment? Southern Illinois U. Helps Teach How

Not that many university conferences focus on wiping down faucets and cleaning floors, much less on how to wipe and clean sustainably. But those are among the topics of a meeting this morning at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, where about 150 representatives of Illinois schools and colleges are attending the Sustainable Facility Care Leadership Conference.

The premise is that you can clean your facilities in ways that protect your employees’ health, enhance the useful life of your buildings, and preserve the environment — and you can save money at the same time, according to a university news release. Although green cleaning is an element of the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program, it doesn’t get nearly as much attention as, say, green roofs or solar panels.

The conference is one consequence of a 2008 Illinois law, the Illinois Schools Green Cleaning Act, that requires elementary and secondary schools to use environmentally friendly cleaning products and techniques. The university — along with the Schools of Illinois Public Cooperative, the Illinois Public Higher Education Cooperative, and the Illinois Community College System — helped organize a cleaning-certification program known as School Cleaning Redesigned for the Environment, or SCORE.

Wallace Burman, the university’s director of purchasing, said those attending the conference would be “talking about the positive impacts of cooperative procurement on sustainable building needs, which extends beyond bidding practices to partnerships with the private sector to become as environmentally friendly as possible while conserving our budgets as much as possible.”