Results From Our Recent Earth Day

This episode of the Clean Processes podcast focuses on Earth Day and its history. In 1970, Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the event, and Walter Cronkite covered it on TV. Today, it is not widely covered by the press, and little progress has been made over the past 53 years. Jerry talks about the advances in green chemical production and shares tips for using green products and what other things both manufacturers and cleaning companies can do 

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Jerry Bauer
Hospitality Cleaning 101
Jerry@hospitalitycleaning101.com

Transcript

Welcome to Clean Processes with Jerry. This podcast is dedicated to building an online community of like-minded individuals and businesses in the chemical and cleaning industry. We're going to share ideas, tips, solutions, and tell some stories to solve problems and to expand our markets. Please join me as we're going to try to do this every week. Frequently we will have a special guest that just might be you. I work for Chem Station of Boston, where I'm based in New England. I also run the site Hospitality Cleaning 101. If you ever have questions, feel free to reach out. If you would like, we'd also, with your permission, answer the question on a future show. At the end of this show, I'm going to include my contact information. Today we're going to talk about Earth Day. It's been two weeks since it was Earth Day, here in year 2023. I decided to do an article or a blog post on Earth Day. Actually, it was probably a couple days before Earth Day. You can find it on LinkedIn. You can also find it on Hospitality Cleaning 101. I've posted it up there. Then on Earth Day itself, I was going to do this podcast and let it slip by. I was going to do a weekend later and then I let it slip by. I kind of let it slip by on a purpose because I wanted to see if there were any changes. I don't know if I was looking for changes. I wanted to see how much news there was going to be about it, if there was going to be any follow-up the day after, the next day. I wasn't saying I was looking for any laws to be passed or anything like that, but I just wanted to see what kind of follow-up there was. I can tell you the first Earth Day was in 1970. That was 53 years ago. It was brought on by actually a senator, a Democrat senator brought it up. His name was Gaylord Nelson. I intend to do some research on Gaylord, what other things he might have had done. I'm also very curious of what this bill got passed by. In other words, what we know the political arena where now, and we know 1970 was probably a lot different. I wanted to see, did it pass overwhelmingly? Did it only pass a certain amount? I think it was just that we're trying to make things, all of us, it was trying to make all of us more aware of what we could do for the importance of preserving and protecting our planet. That was 53 years ago. If you go back and do some research, which I have a lot of notes on my lap right now, and I did a lot of research on this because I had forgotten in 53 years. You can go back and you can watch the beginning in 1970. It was covered by Walter Cronkite. It's on YouTube. Excellent piece. I'll also tell you that it was not political, of course. I can tell you that this year, I went and I checked the different TV stations, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and others, the nationwide channels, ABCs, stuff like that. Saw very little, very little. Saw very little in the press. Now, press, I mean the press that's on my computer. Saw very little the following day. So, I actually think it got more press back in 1970. Now, I can tell you we've come a long way since then. I can also tell you that in 1970, there were different problems of small water was dirty. The rivers were in very bad shape with pollution. I can tell you that through many people's help, many rivers and streams are much cleaner than they were back then. So, with working in the chemical industry, as well as the cleaning industry in this podcast, I was trying to wonder what we can do. Are we taking advantage of all the things that are offered to us? Are we offering all of our customers the best that we can offer? Because we can't change this overnight. It didn't happen overnight. We can't change overnight. However, we've been at this for 53 years. Possibly, we could be a little bit further along in many regards. See, with the production of cleaning chemicals, they're using many caustics and many different chemicals that in the past 50 years, we have become much more greener. We've come out, and I'm not saying necessarily that I work for them, even though we do have it. Most companies have a green label product. Now, you have to understand in the past 50 years, some of that, I'm not going to say the word bogus, but some of that wasn't as green as we all thought it was. Other chemicals didn't work as well. Well, I can tell you that there have been many improvements made. Just because you had a bad experience with a green chemical 30 years ago doesn't mean we shouldn't try it again today because they're a new technology. We, as a chemical manufacturer, and I'll mention in a minute who I work for, chemical manufacturing companies have to be demanding that from our suppliers. The suppliers are doing the research and the development. And we have to be going out and telling our customers when we can substitute a green product. Well, I was looking the other day on this podcast, number 28. I've been doing it over a year, not yet a year and a half. And on each podcast, I mentioned I worked for Chem Station of Boston. Chem Station is a nationwide company. I worked for the franchise in New England. Today, not in the other 28, but today I'm going to give you a three-minute commercial on who I work for because I'm proud to say who I work for because we have a refillable tank program. And with a refillable tank program, we're eliminating many buckets, barrels, and those buckets and barrels have to go to usually a dump. They're not recycled properly. I can tell you how much just as big a problem is. I go outside of different facilities and they have the buckets and the barrels and they're turned upside down and chemicals are leaking out of it because when they change a bucket and barrel, frequently there's a gallon or two, if not five gallons of product still in there that they're not going to wait to take it from the last drop. While that product sits outside and it can be turned over and a chemical can leach into the ground. So there are a tremendous amount of value to a recyclable or refillable tank program when we recycle some buckets and barrels. You should really check it out if you're not familiar with Chem Station. Again, I work for the one in Boston, but feel free to contact me wherever you are and I can help you and send you more information because we are in most industrial markets. The other thing, as I said, the chemical companies can do is they can ask for support from their vendors. What's new? What can we help our customers with with green technology? Stuff that is not so toxic? Well, number one, it's not helping the earth. Number two is we have more responsibility, if that's the proper terminology, where we're trying to protect the different people working with the product. Are we the chemical company offering training classes, support to the end users of how to dispose of some of these products, how to use some of these products, and doing this for many years. There's still some people who go by the theory that a little works a little good, a lot works a lot of good. They're overusing your product. What happens, that product goes down the drain, changes the pH, eventually might end up different streams, rivers, systems like that. So we have a responsibility. The end user has one, but we, the chemical company have one as well. What are we doing in packaging? Well, stated what we've done with the refillable tank program. I'm proud to say that when I go to hotels now, frequently you don't see the little bottles of shampoo, the little bottles of conditioner, and things like that. They have something mounted in the bathroom with a pump system where you pump it out, put it in your hand and wash your hair inside. It's a great idea because if you were in a hotel and you use a bottle of shampoo, a small bottle of shampoo, you only use a third of it, a half. What happens to the other half? Goes into the trash can. We know it doesn't, let's say that shampoo is in a plastic, plastic doesn't dissolve. Plastic, they have pictures of plastic from, you know, 50, 100 years ago. It's still the same. So that chemical stays in there and it leaches out eventually. So we have done a whole lot more and there's a lot more that we can do by asking for help from the people, different people we work for. No matter where you work, you can do stuff within your own building. You can do stuff with saving your energy and such. I know that recently we've gone to when we do a delivery, we've done and we've asked to use their air pressure system, pump our product out because otherwise we'd have to have the engine on our truck, which was beside burning fuel, creating smog, some of the vapors back in the loading dock, one less thing you need to worry about. So look around where you're at, look at where you work, look at your customers, look for different things that you can do, not just on Earth Day, but on every day. I know at where I work, we've done different things to just try to recycle within our building, to be more aware, be more aware of the track, be more aware of the cans. If we can do it at work, we can do it at home, it all helps. Earth Day was started, like I said, 53 years ago, and there's many things that we have done and there's many things that we can do more. Please check out this podcast, check out my blog post at HospitalityCleaning101, where you can learn a whole lot more within the articles and some of the resources that I've supplied to you. If you have any questions, any concerns, feel free to write me. We'd love to hear from you about what you've been able to do for both yourself as well as for your customers of helping them with sustainability. I will end, well, I'm not going to end the podcast, my final story is I'm so proud that many of my customers are breweries. The breweries do so much with sustainability, from the grains they use to make the beer, from water usage and chemical usage. Just in the past year, they've come out with new plastic tubs that hold the cans together that are now recyclable, that can be reused. You can get these plastic tubs and you can return them back to a brewery. Many breweries still sell beer in growlers. We go in there with a glass container there and you're just filling it up. The beer stays in your refrigerator for a week without going flat. There's different things we can do. Again, I'm proud of who I work for, proud of my customers. Probably why I have so much fun at work because I see little things each day of what we can do individually and together to help our earth because don't forget, we don't have a plan B.
13:47 | SPEAKER_00 | If you like the information we are sharing here, please subscribe, like and share. If you have a question that you would like answered on the show, then just please make that request in advance. Remember the opinions shared on this podcast are Jerry's and he will be responsible for them. If you have any questions, ideas or comments or would like to become a guest, please send an email to jerry at hospitalitycleaning101.com. Have a great day. Remember to wash your hands for 20 seconds and stay safe.