[Ian Rochester]

Just had a request from a large commercial client who we have done work for in the past asking for a quote for a regular window cleaning contract, no problem, however they also want details on how we manage or will manage our carbon footprint!!!!

They're VERY eco friendly and are looking for some eco award for their new premises.

Any ideas, we're WFP

[Jeff Brimble]

Start recycling  rainwater initially just on their premises ?

[Chris Galloway]

h ttp://www.carbonfootprint.com/

read on the site what its all about and how to calculate yours.

[The Great One]

 Yeah, tell them that carbon is essential for all life on this planet and without it they wouldn't even be standing there.

That there is no such thing as man made global warming & that it is a natural occurrence that has happened at least 5 times before man was even on this planet.

Also that the planet has cooled for the last nine years and if it doesn't warm soon Global warming is going to be cancelled.

Regards

Martin

[peter holley]

Yeah, tell them that carbon is essential for all life on this planet and without it they wouldn't even be standing there.

That there is no such thing as man made global warming & that it is a natural occurrence that has happened at least 5 times before man was even on this planet.

Also that the planet has cooled for the last nine years and if it doesn't warm soon Global warming is going to be cancelled.

Regards





were you there? the last time this global warming happened?


Martin

[simon knight]

Short of taking your tank out of the van, loading it onto a handcart and wheeling to their premises I don't see how you are expected to manage your carbon footprint.

You use pure water...I mean how much more carbon neutral can you get?

I wouldn't jump through too many hoops to land this job.

[seandyer2003]

bio diesel lpg etc is considered eco friendly, do yo have new vans, that will be considered better than old, use e-billing to save paper, email them their invoice! and use rain water as said other than that i cant see there are many window cleaners going for the eco bit...

[Ian W]

I think it might be worth making a point about being as eco friendly as possible.

I know I have quite a few customers who are into recycling, etc. and these types of people might choose an eco friendly cleaner over another.

I say work your carbon footprint out and use the info to try to gain more customers! 

Martin - I think you could be right and this is just a natural cycle that the earth goes through every few millenia, but I don't think we are helping things. Being eco friendly is probably just common sense. (And we all know that can be in short supply!  )

[Alex Gardiner]

You could start by explaining the eco benefits of using pure water as opposed to using traditional methods. The use and pollution of water some experts feel is going to be more significant over the next 30 years than the issue of oil/gas.

There was a post some years ago on this forum (I think) where a very knowledgeable person had calculated the water used by a traditional window cleaner. It went something like this:

'Traditional WC

4 buckets fresh water = 40 litres
Water used in washing machine water to clean cloths = 100 litres
Water used by water board to clean the detergent contaminated water from the washing machine = 5,000 litres (this figure is going by my memory so if anyone has a better memory as to the exact figure please update)

Total water needed to service a traditional window cleaner for one days work = 5,140 litres

WFP WC

Water used from tank 300 litres
Water wasted from RO system 300 litres

Total water needed to service a WFP window cleaner for one days work = 600 litres

This makes the average WFP window cleaner about 10x more water efficient than a traditional window cleaner.'

Please note that the above calculations are purely for water usage not energy: they do not allow for the energy used by the water board in pumping the polluted water around in their cleaning plants. Likewise it also does not take into account the increase in fuel used to carry the increased water weight, however this could be offset by the improved aerodynamics of the vehicle due to no ladders on the roof!

The most environmental way to use WFP is to process the water on site with a portable RO trolley system. This way you are not using extra fuel to transport the water in your vehicle.

The problem with the above information is that it will also apply to all of your WFP competitors! You do need to set yourself apart some how. One way would be for them to install a rainwater harvest system where they could store a 1000 litres of rainwater on site and you could buy a pumped RO trolley system which you would attach to their water store (1000 litre IBC, second-hand so that it is recycled) and produce pure water. You could also pump the waste from the RO back into the storage tank as it would still be fairly clean, perhaps after after processing a 1000litres you would need to flush and run the waste down the drain for the next 200 litres or so. Or use DI resin as this would be very cost-effective with rainwater, but not quite as eco-friendly!

The above method would be recycling water and would minimise transport footprint. You could then catch the bus to work with your pole and you would be the greenest WFP in town! Well as long as the bus was operating on a standard route with a minimum occupancy of about 80%, otherwise a small car would be far better. The bio-diesel option is actually going to cause far more of an eco-problem in the next 10 years than fossil fuels, so the other option would be to run an electric car which is charged overnight when the National Grid is completely wasting millions of KWH of electric which they cannot store (unlike some of our European neighbours) so it just gets wasted. Whilst you would still have to pay for this it would have a completely zero effect on emissions as the electric would otherwise just be wasted and unused. Some experts reckon that upwards of a million electric vehicles could thus be charged overnight without any extra electricity being generated.

I would also suggest if you are really serious about this issue you look into the sourcing of natural versions of your tools. All of your hose could be sourced from Fair-Trade rubber plantations, this could then be coiled around recycled wooden cable drums mounted on a wooden frame. You could use wooden stock/boars bristle brushes. For low level work it would be best to attach these to wooden broom handles from sustained forests. For higher-level work try tying sections of Bamboo together, slow to assemble but very light and you would be 'saving' the planet.

If you implemented all of the above, I do not think that anyone could touch you for eco-status.

[matt]

ive got a customer who is very eco freindly

the whole " pure water " thing in her eyes is a crime

afterall we take water from the tap thats been treated, then the waste normally goes the drain, hardly eco freindly is it ( though i now say i use rainwater thats been treated, i have on the occasion used a drop of rain water in my barrels )

[Chris Galloway]

ive got a customer who is very eco freindly

the whole " pure water " thing in her eyes is a crime

afterall we take water from the tap thats been treated, then the waste normally goes the drain, hardly eco freindly is it ( though i now say i use rainwater thats been treated, i have on the occasion used a drop of rain water in my barrels )

Use can harvest the waste ro water and use that to water your garden, so it doesn't go down the drain.

What they dont know, is the resin, they are plastic and cant be recycled - yeah sure you take it to a recycling centre but how much plastic recycling really takes place? So effectively it takes thousands of years to break down and degrade.. thats not really environmentally friendly. You can look at so many consumables us WC use, its just not worth thinking about really.

[Ian Rochester]

Martin,
Probably a good answer, though not likely to land me the job!

Chris,
Thanks for the site info, been looking at a few different ones, I need to work out our carbon footprint and see what the ECO cost is for becoming neutral.

Simon,
The job is for a monthly clean at around £500/clean, so a bit of hoop jumping is probably worth it!

EWC,
Never thought about rainwater, I'll probably mention it in the blurb but can't see

They currently give all their staff bikes to cycle to work, or bus passes!!

Some excellent replies and I'll be using them in my blurb.

People are obviously thinking about it, it would be good if we could come up with some valid reasons, advantages from an  ECO perspective

[simon knight]

Simon,
The job is for a monthly clean at around £500/clean, so a bit of hoop jumping is probably worth it!

Oh yeah baby, for that sort of contract I'd jump through lots of hoops...and some

[Ian Rochester]

  and me we'll have to wait and see what happens.

[stevieg]

why not turn the question around and ask them to help and imform you of how to improve your footprint.they should be able to show you how to calculate your existing and then subsequently after their help, the new figure.It will then be a feather in both your caps which may benefit both parties when you lower the initial findings.Further to this tell them that you subscribe to this forum and that the resulting imformation could be useful to much more people!Everyone wins .

[simon knight]

and me we'll have to wait and see what happens.

Oh well good luck mate...hope it works out. I think the way forward is to bang on about the "pure water" aspect of it.

Perhaps tell them you donate 5% of your profits to some green charity...just a thought!

[Ian Rochester]

I've just spoken to someone from Carbon Neutral about reducing our footprint, basically I have to give them £850 - £1000 just for an assessment, then more to implement their recommendations of how to reduce your footprint, then more for deciding on ways of offsetting my footprint to become neutral, then more for them to promote to the world that I'm now carbon neutral.................and penniless!!!!

Maybe I'm just too cynical and think this is just another gravy train for someone......... or maybe not.

[simon knight]

Maybe I'm just too cynical and think this is just another gravy train for someone......... or maybe not.

Nowt cynical about it Guv. Naively I thought carbon footprint advise was free...obviously not But £850/£1000?...where do they get their figures from?

[The Great One]

Hi

They plucked them out of the air.

MMGW is a multi billion $$$ business, for something that is not yet a fact, not only is it not a fact but there has been no GW since 1999, we are actually cooling, this coincides with less output from the sun.

Ask them why there is GW on the other planets when there are no humans on them?

Bunch of money grabbing muppets

Regards

Martin

[scud]

  Just tell them you re-use your plastic bags at Tesco's and that will save the planet, while the yanks still drive around in huge cars and have all those towns based on people using only aeroplanes - James May last night.