MITIE's retail clients have extremely high expectations of our service along with some demanding environmental targets. We are determined to support their objectives, align our goals with theirs, and continue to develop fresh ideas.

The obvious way to make the cleaning industry more sustainable is by using products made from organic and biodegradable ingredients and avoiding the toxic chemicals found in traditional cleaning products. What's more, the use of these organic ingredients can also help to reduce a number of health problems associated with more toxic cleaning products.

Our aims are to source the best products that are available and to make sure that whatever is sourced from a supply chain has the highest environmental credentials and an ongoing improvement plan. We prefer to buy products that originate from the UK or Europe to speed up delivery times and eliminate long haul transportation that has an impact on the overall carbon footprint.

However, we see 'going green' as more than just using products that don't harm the environment. It involves changing processes and ways of thinking to provide a genuinely sustainable service both for those using the products and for those people coming into contact with them.

We are now offering customers low energy equipment such as the latest air purifying systems and cool-air hand driers. We are also utilising products, such as microfibre cloths, that can clean surfaces more easily without the use of chemicals. These initiatives are helping the industry to become greener, while maintaining high levels of cleaning standards.

Indeed, we see going green as the way forward for our cleaning business. Our procurement department is continuously researching and adopting the most sustainable cleaning materials and practices to use on our client sites.

In fact, we have recently introduced a totally 'Green Washroom' cleaning range which runs alongside our traditional service delivery cleaning processes. It incorporates cleaning products that can deliver excellent results but dramatically reduce our environmental footprint and energy costs. The green washroom range includes the low energy air purifiers, microfibre cloths and energy efficient, cool-air hand driers already mentioned, and also incorporates bacteria- and enzyme-based cleaning products. Furthermore, MITIE uses only washroom products that are endorsed by Defra.

Looking to the future, we will continue to innovate in order to improve how we deal with environmental issues. High recycling and energy/fuel saving targets have already been set. These targets are increased annually and are constantly monitored and benchmarked.

It seems only logical that firms such as MITIE should continue to evolve their environmentally-friendly products and standards.

l Martyn Freeman is managing director of MITIE's Cleaning Dept

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