For companies with meaningful sustainability commitments — whether publicly stated ESG goals, LEED certifications, or internal environmental policies — the cleaning program is often an afterthought. It shouldn't be. Here are five concrete ways your cleaning vendor can support rather than undermine your environmental and social governance goals.
1. Use EPA Safer Choice-Certified Products
EPA Safer Choice certification evaluates every ingredient in a cleaning product for human health and environmental safety — not just the active ingredients. Products that meet this standard have documented biodegradability, low aquatic toxicity, and reduced VOC content. Switching to a cleaning program that uses Safer Choice-certified products across all chemical categories reduces your facility's contribution to indoor VOC levels and aquatic contamination from wastewater.
For ESG reporting purposes, product certification provides a documentable, third-party-verified claim about environmental impact. This is more credible in sustainability reports than vague statements about "eco-friendly" practices.
2. Provide Product Usage Documentation
Many corporate sustainability frameworks — including GRI, SASB, and CDP — ask about chemical usage in facility operations. A cleaning vendor that can provide documentation of the products used in your facility, including safety data sheets and certification numbers, gives your sustainability team something to actually report. A vendor that can't provide this documentation is a reporting liability, not just an environmental one.
Ask your cleaning vendor for a complete product list with EPA registration numbers and any relevant certifications. If they can't provide it, that tells you something about how seriously they take the environmental side of their operations.
3. Reduce Single-Use Plastic in Cleaning Operations
Commercial cleaning operations generate significant single-use plastic through product packaging, disposable wipes, and single-use applicators. Cleaning vendors that use concentrated product systems with refillable dispensers, washable microfiber rather than disposable wipes, and products packaged in recycled or recyclable materials reduce the plastic waste footprint of your facility cleaning program.
For companies with plastic reduction commitments, auditing your cleaning vendor's packaging and disposable material use is part of a complete picture. The volume of single-use plastic in a nightly office cleaning program across a year adds up materially.
4. Support Indoor Air Quality Goals
LEED for Building Operations and Maintenance (LEED O+M) includes an Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) section that specifically addresses cleaning products and practices. Green cleaning policies — using low-VOC products, HEPA-filtered vacuums, and microfiber systems — can contribute to LEED O+M points under the IAQ credit category. If your building is pursuing or maintaining LEED certification, your cleaning vendor needs to be aligned with those standards and able to document compliance.
Beyond LEED, company wellness programs increasingly address indoor air quality as a component of employee health. A cleaning program that contributes to lower VOC levels and better particulate control is a concrete, measurable contribution to that goal.
5. Align with Social Responsibility Values
The "S" in ESG covers social governance — how a company treats workers in its supply chain. For companies with supplier code of conduct policies, the employment practices of service vendors — including cleaning companies — may be in scope. Questions worth asking a cleaning vendor: Are your workers employees or independent contractors? Do you provide health benefits? What's your worker training and safety program?
For Bay Area companies that have made public commitments to responsible supply chain management, the cleaning vendor isn't exempt from those standards simply because they're a service provider rather than a product supplier.
Where to Start
The most actionable first step is to ask your current cleaning vendor for a complete product list with certifications and a written green cleaning policy. If they can't provide it within a week, they either don't have one or can't find it — neither is a good sign. If you're evaluating new cleaning vendors, ask these questions during the proposal process: product certification status, documentation capability, packaging practices, and employee vs. contractor status.
Bay Cleaning Pro uses EPA Safer Choice-certified and low-VOC products as our standard offering, can provide complete product documentation for sustainability reporting, uses HEPA-filtered vacuums and microfiber systems, and employs W-2 employees with documented training programs. Contact us or request a proposal to discuss how our cleaning program can support your company's sustainability goals.
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