The subject of green cleaning can get so complicated and muddled when you listen to everyone's advertisements. I believe this subject is about cleaning so I will stick to the actual process of cleaning.
The process of cleaning has four different elements remembered by the acronym TACT.
The first 'T' stands for time. This is the amount of time a chemical dwells on the soil it is meant to clean.
The "A" stands for agitation. Agitation is the process that is used to facilitate the penetration of the water and cleaning chemical to remove or suspend the soil.
The "C" stands for chemicals. Chemicals are essentially the ingredients we add to water to allow soil to be suspended from the surface in which it is attached.
The second "T" stands for temperature. Higher temperatures of cleaning solutions are known to clean better than cold solutions. Hot water is much more active than cold water therefore it speeds up the cleaning process.
These are the four factors of cleaning. Whenever you decrease one of these elements you will have to increase one of the other three elements.
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Now lets look at this from the green cleaning point of view.
The amount of time a chemical sits on soil does not hurt a living species if the chemical is not toxic to that species. However if a process requires a lot of time it may mean that process used to clean with will use more energy because of that extra time.
Agitation is a mechanical process. Mechanical processes require energy. Different mechanic processes require different amount of energy. Ideally we would like to use a process that requires minimal energy. The amount of mechanical agitation required is going to vary according to the chemicals and equipment used.
Temperature is a key variable in cleaning, especially carpet cleaning. It is well known that the hot, hot water created by truck powered hot water extraction units very popular in carpet cleaning perform far better than most other methods. Again the kind of chemical used has a direct baring on the temperature used or for that matter required. A lot of people have great issues with the pollution generated by truck-powered or truck-mounted units.
What I would like to focus on though is the root of each one of these elements T-A-C-T. That of course is the chemical. Each element revolves around the chemistry being used. If you use a nasty chemical you are just plain not green cleaning.
I believe the toxicity of the chemical being used is what matters the most when it comes to qualifying to be a green cleaning solution. A lot of companies state that they are green cleaning just because the chemicals they are using aren't as toxic as their predecessors.Others say their products are green because they use renewable resources and recyclable materials. Others state simply that they are organic.
In this day and age there are many different categories of safe, non-toxic, green cleaning carpet cleaning solutions. There are food based products. There are botanical cleaning solutions. There are also a variety fo carbonated cleaning solutions.Each one of these classifications have their own attributes.
Not every cleaning solution will clean every category of soil. A great resource for exploring different green carpet cleaning solutions is environmentally_safe_cleaning_solutions.html
James (Lee) Senter has been a well known advocate of green carpet cleaning for over fifteen years. Lee has tested the effectiveness of green cleaning solutions for several manufacturers by using these solutions at his carpet cleaning company Fresh and Clean in Toronto, Ontario. Lee is a respected IICRC Carpet Cleaning Technican instructor and teaches for distributors across the country and for large franchise organizations.
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