Did you know?

• 50 percent of all illnesses are caused or aggravated by poor IAQ
• 20 percent of all schools have problems linked to IAQ
• 3-7 percent of productivity on average is lost due to IAQ

Volatile organic compounds (VOC) are a leading cause of poor IAQ. VOCs evaporate at room temperature, releasing compounds into the air that are inhaled by students and staff. Multiple aspects within a facility can emit VOCs, including your everyday cleaning chemicals. In comparison, green cleaning products and processes are designed to create a healthier and safer environment for students and staff, while some are also designed to help reduce VOC emissions and improve air quality.

Healthy Schools Campaign (HSC) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making schools healthier places for all students, including the improvement of IAQ. Diversey Care is proud to be a sponsor of the campaign’s resource website, GreenCleanSchools.org. Using the site, schools can search proper green cleaning products and procedures that can help improve your school’s overall environment and IAQ. Many Diversey products, all Green Seal, EcoLogo and/or GREENGUARD-certified are listed on GreenCleanSchools.org.

Diversey Care looks forward to helping HSC promote green cleaning in schools. In July, we will attend the first Green Clean Leadership Council Summit in Seattle, Wash. The two-day event will feature presentations and panel discussions on the future of green cleaning.

We’ll also be encouraging schools to apply for HSC’s Green Cleaning Award for Schools & Universities, which recognizes facilities for their dedication to environmentally friendly and safe cleaning practices. Many winners of this award have used Diversey Care solutions to enhance their green cleaning programs.

To learn more, visit www.GreenCleanSchools.org.

Dr. Ilham Kadri, Diversey Care President, at the 2014 EHMA general meeting.

This year, we’re taking an interactive and digital approach to communication and encourage attendees to visit our booth to share their sustainability priorities. With the support of EHMA, we are gathering short video clips and input for a Sustainability Manifesto that will be shared with the industry. When leaders in the industry openly discuss their sustainability goals, EHMA and like-minded organizations are better able to develop and drive solutions that alleviate their greatest sustainability concerns.

On April 18, I will be part of a panel discussion on the topic of “Communication Revolution,” moderated by Michael McKay, a radio journalist. Other members of the panel include Thomas Di Giacomo (CTO Swisscom), Cyril Ranque (Expedia), Mario Jobbe (Brand Karma), Tamar Koifman (Digital Luxury Group) and an executive of Servus Tourismuspartner.

On April 19, Hans Koch, president of EHMA, and I will present the EHMA Sustainability Award by Diversey Care. The award acknowledges a project that transforms the conventional understanding of sustainability to deliver a most efficient output.

Last year, the award was presented to Fabrice Moizan, General Manager of Hôtel Fouquet’s Barrière in Paris for replanting 40 hectares of forest through fundraising and cooperation with the local community and other industry stakeholders.

For more information about the upcoming meeting, visit www.ehmageneva2015.com/.

For updates from the panel discussion and the award ceremony, follow Diversey Care on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Consider these facts that make food waste a serious global issue that concerns us all:

• A staggering 40 percent of the food we produce is never consumed. That translates to 1.3 billion tons of food wasted each year.
• The amount of food wasted is four times the amount needed to feed the 800 million people who are malnourished and has a retail value of nearly $1 trillion.
• The global food system is estimated to be responsible for up to one-third of human-related greenhouse gas emissions, representing over 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide, and farming is responsible for 70 percent of our fresh waste consumption.

Faced with issues relating to the growing populations and the associated increasing food demand, the tide in understanding food waste issues has begun to turn. In a recent Harris Poll survey commissioned by Sealed Air among U.S. grocery shoppers, consumers ranked “food waste” as their second highest concern after reliable food safety, and ahead of climate change, air pollution, and water shortages. In that same survey, nearly 80 percent of consumers indicated they would think more highly of stores and food brands that helped them to not waste the food they buy.

The reasons for food waste are complex. From a food service operator discarding a box of wilted lettuce, to a retailer rejecting a pallet of “imperfect “ apples, to a consumer throwing away food not consumed in time—food waste occurs across the supply chain, from farm to fork. Understanding the factors that affect spoilage, damage and even consumer preference is the key to developing successful strategies aimed at reducing food waste across each stage of the food supply chain. By doing so, we enhance our ability to feed the world nutritiously, safely and sustainably while minimizing environmental, social and economic impacts.

Food safety and food waste are inextricably linked. Concern over food safety is one of the reasons food is discarded, either because of reasons such as visible spoilage, potential temperature abuse or because food has passed an expiration date.

Consider these ways to reduce and manage food waste in your supply chain:

• Cold Chain: Ensuring proper temperature controls during transportation is essential to ensure safety and quality of foods before it reaches the store or the restaurant.  Modern technology can help manage and monitor temperature controls throughout the supply chain. For example, TempTRIP, a unique in-transit temperature monitoring system, provides temperature monitoring capabilities during transportation and storage of foods in the distribution center.
• Packaging Innovations: Look for packaging systems that prevent physical damage during distribution and extend shelf life of perishable food products. Use of modified atmosphere packaging, for example, is a proven method to extend the freshness of many food products from pasta to cheese to meats. In addition, packaging that allows restaurants or consumers to use what they need, or to portion food, can prevent avoidable food waste.
• Staff Training: Training your staff on basic food safety teaches important information on using day labels for perishable and high risk foods, stock rotation and proper storage- all important considerations for minimizing food waste in your operation.
• Track your Waste: Establish a simple and easy food waste tracking system- teach your staff to measure food waste before and after service. Diversey Consulting can help your operation set up this system.

Both consumers and the food industry have a role in understanding and responding to the challenges around food waste.  At the end of the day, preventing food waste is good for our society, our environment and our economy.

For more about food safety, watch this Diversey Consulting video:

We would love to hear your points of view. Engage with our social media channels in Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.

International Women’s Day has been observed since in the early 1900’s, a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialized world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies.

The first National Woman’s Day (NWD) was observed across the United States on February 28, 1909. In 1910, a second International Conference of Working Women was held in Copenhagen, led by a woman named Clara Zetkin and International Women’s Day was created.

Since its birth, IWD has become a global day of recognition and celebration. For many years the United Nations has held an annual IWD conference to coordinate international efforts for women’s rights and participation in social, political and economic processes. 1975 was designated as ‘International Women’s Year’ by the United Nations. Women’s organisations and governments around the world have also observed IWD annually on March 8 by holding large-scale events that honour women’s advancement while diligently reminding us of the continued vigilance and action required to ensure that women’s equality is gained and maintained in all aspects of life.

For IWD, thousands of events are held throughout the world to inspire women and celebrate achievements. Make It Happen (#MAKEITHAPPEN) is the 2015 theme for internationalwomensday.com, encouraging effective action for advancing and recognizing women.

At Sealed Air we have a great initiative called WIN (Women‘s Initiative Network). WIN aims to ensure that Sealed Air attracts, retains and advances the professional development of women, in order to improve the company’s gender diversity. The WIN Steering Committee is very active in planning a series of events both locally and globally and I am very proud to be part of WIN and see the engagement flowing from so many parts of the world.

We should celebrate all women who make it happen each and every day and acknowledge all men who support, promote and encourage diversity and inclusion. Tell me how you will celebrate this important event next Sunday, thinking how your kids’, daughters’ and girls’ futures will be bright, equal, safe and full of rewards. Please send me your thoughts, your ideas, your photos or videos.

We recently renewed our global partnership with SKÅL and are looking forward to working together in order to improve the tourism industry. In particular, our partnership aims to set ambitious sustainability standards and inspire the industry to practice responsible tourism.

Over 7 million children die each year from disease that can be prevented with simple handwashing. With soap and a bit of instruction, these kids can lead healthier lives. This is why Sealed Air developed Soap for Hope, a program that will be a key focus for the partnership with SKÅL in 2015. Soap for Hope aims to save lives, provide livelihoods and prevent waste by collecting used soap bars from hotels.

Each year, a typical 400-room hotel generates 3.5 tons of solid soap waste. Soap for Hope teaches at-risk communities to salvage these remaining pieces of soap and turn them into new soap bars. Soap is recovered from local hotels and then transported to a site for local residents to process it. The soap is redistributed to communities in need to increase hygiene and health or sold to provide an income. We recently launched Soap for Hope in Latin America and are excited to introduce it to other areas of the world.

We are also excited to recognize other innovative sustainability projects in the hospitality industry in 2015. In October, SKÅL will also hold its 76th World Congress in Mombasa, Kenya. Once again, Diversey Care and SKÅL will host an awards program to recognize hoteliers for their sustainability initiatives. We have heard many inspiring stories over the years and look forward to discovering and acknowledging many more.

Tweet me (@lillkleven), Diversey Care (@diverseycare) and SKÅL International (@skalinternational) to share your thoughts on sustainability and hospitality.

Each year, the Global Food Safety Initiative hosts a conference which attracts over 1,000 food safety professionals from more than 60 countries to discuss industry issues and solutions. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia is the host city for this year’s event, taking place March 3-5. The theme of the conference is “Food Safety: A Shared Responsibility.” This is the first time that GFSI and the Consumer Goods forum has decided to host the conference in Asia with a goal of expanding the forum to create a more inclusive dialog on the issues of food safety and security with a rapidly growing Asian market.

So what is the significance of shared responsibility?

Shared responsibility means that we can’t assume others will take care of the food safety issues we face. We must all be actively involved in advancing the industry and identifying solutions that will improve the way we live. This means retailers, suppliers, equipment providers and packaging manufacturers in every corner of the world need to each look for ways to alleviate food safety risks and protect our food supply. By doing so, the frequency and impact of food illness outbreaks can be minimized and higher quality food can be made available to more people globally.

In addition to food safety, food waste is an important topic of discussion. Did you know that 30 to 50 percent of all harvested food is wasted before it reaches your plate? If more food could be kept fresh and safe, many people around the world wouldn’t be facing hunger.

On Wednesday, March 4 from 4-5:30 p.m., we will host a conference breakout session titled “Food safety driving sustainable business growth,” which will highlight the issue of food waste, accountabilities for fixing the problem and innovations in food waste management. The session will feature insight from Catherine Francois, Global Director of Diversey Consulting, Dr. Ronald Cotterman, Vice President of Sustainability with Sealed Air, Hugo Byrnes, Vice President of Product Integrity with Royal Ahold and Jean-Michel Offe, Executive Vice President of Development and Innovation with Shangri-La International Hotel Management Ltd.

Check out what industry leaders say about the Global Food Safety Conference in this video.

Follow along with our live Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn updates from the event.

One of the best parts of my role at Diversey Care is building talented teams and inspiring them to quickly transform opportunities into tangible results. Creating a culture of empowerment is critical to this. Empowerment is much more than just encouraging and involving. It’s really about leaders enabling people to make more and bigger decisions without having to refer to someone more senior. The accelerated decision making and more effective cross-functional working then drives results.

My first real experience of empowerment came early in my career when I was overseeing a factory within Diversey, a division of Unilever at the time.  The factory tripled productivity and won a host of external awards including Best Factory of the Year.

The step change in performance only occurred after we created a culture of empowerment. This was accomplished by encouraging natural cross-functional work teams to take the vision of the overall business and convert it into goals and measures that were meaningful to them. Everyone knew “what a good day looked like.”

We reviewed results in multi-level meetings which connected everyone in a very public way, and more importantly, ensured that the teams were no longer a group of people who just worked together but a group of people who needed each other, and above all, trusted each other.

At Sealed Air, one of our values is Courageous Determination, meaning that we are empowered to do what it takes to deliver what we promise. This video (http://vimeo.com/114175925) recently developed by the North American Diversey Care team captures the key role empowerment plays in effective cross-functional working.

How does empowerment impact your workplace?

Taking place at the SIRHA International Hotel, Catering and Food Trade Exhibition, in Lyon, France, from the 24^th – 28^th January, the event will also see Ilham Khadri, President at Diversey Care, give a presentation on ‘The unavoidable progress of scientific innovation and its impact on Food Service hygiene’ at the World Cuisine Summit. The presentation will analyse how new innovations can help us eat better, and look at the scientific solutions which can help avoid risks and food scandals. For those of you that cannot make the event, we wanted to share with you some important insights into the risk factors contributing to foodborne illnesses, and ways in which these risks can be mitigated.

You can’t change a customer’s first impression of your restaurant. From the moment patrons walk through the front door, they are looking for a clean, visually-pleasing environment. Diners’ expectations have never been higher, and the overall dining experience is what will keep them returning. As an operator, your commitment to creating a superior dining experience is reflected in the gleaming surfaces of both the dining and kitchen areas.

It is important to place the highest priority on food safety in order to best protect customers, employees and the reputation of your business. Individual incidents of foodborne illness may be somewhat commonplace in today’s world, but widespread outbreaks can be front page news and result in negative backlash, causing sales to plummet.

Despite significant advances in modern technology and efforts to provide safe food, foodborne illness remains a real public health concern in both developing and developed nations throughout the world. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), in its 2014 report ‘Trends and Sources of Zoonoses, Zoonotic Agents and Food-borne Outbreaks in 2012’, revealed that in 27 EU member states Campylobacteriosis was the most commonly reported zoonosis, with 214,268 confirmed human cases in 2012 alone.

Improper cleaning and sanitisation of foodservice equipment, surfaces and utensils are a huge factor in the food production process. Microorganisms or allergens are frequently transferred directly onto food or surfaces during the food preparation, serving and storage cycle. Poor hand washing, failure to clean and sanitise a cutting board between uses, or using the same preparation table with raw and cooked foods are all examples of how easy it is to move bacteria around the kitchen and create dangerous food safety risks.

Cleaning in food service environments is essential

Restaurant owners and managers can ensure their facility is in top shape by following these simple rules:

1.    Choose the right products and tools

Effective cleaning and sanitisation within the foodservice environment will reduce the chance of cross-contamination of “safe food” during processing, preparation, storage and service because soil, bacteria and other microorganisms are physically removed. However, it’s important that restaurants use products and tools that will deliver superior cleaning results. These include chlorine and quat based sanitisers, degreasers and other surface cleaners.

To ensure the proper concentration of chemicals and achieve the best cleaning results, restaurants should install space-saving dispensing systems that provide dilution control. These also eliminate overuse of chemicals and unnecessary waste because employees don’t have to make guesses about dilution.

Employees must also be mindful of the temperature that chemical sanitisers work best at and the contact time that is required to kill harmful microorganisms. A lower contact time can help improve productivity and compliance with cleaning and sanitisation but operators should ensure the product is effective at removing bacteria and safe.

 2.    Create and follow a schedule for cleaning food contact surfaces

Once the right products and tools have been selected, restaurant managers should create an easy-to-follow process that details cleaning and sanitisation responsibilities. Since cross-contamination is the most common and critical sanitisation failure leading to foodborne illnesses, it’s important that food contact surfaces are thoroughly maintained on a regular basis. These surfaces include any equipment surface or utensil which food may touch during the food production process or via potential “incidental” channels such as food draining, dripping or splashing onto the food preparation areas. For instance, the interior of a microwave oven is considered a food contact surface because food stuck to the sides or ceiling of the oven could drip onto other foods being warmed.

 3.    Reinforce practices with training

Instances of foodborne illness are usually the result of proper procedure non-compliance so it is critical that every member of a foodservice team knows what constitutes a food contact surface. Additionally, employees should understand the importance of using the proper processes and products to both clean and sanitise.

Online training is an effective tool for standardising education within a facility and across multiple restaurant locations. It also allows managers to keep track of employees’ test results and identify areas for improvement on an individual basis. Employees should undergo training when they are first hired and periodically throughout the year, as risks and responsibilities change over time.

Every restaurant operator wants a spotless record when it comes to instances of foodborne illness. Keeping kitchen and dining environments clean not only increases safety but encourages customers to return again and again. Choosing the right products and tools, developing proper procedures and implementing effective training protocols for staff are key elements to any successful food service operation.

Even when you practice proper hand hygiene, it’s hard to avoid germs if surfaces aren’t regularly and adequately cleaned and disinfected. In order for facilities to reduce infection rates, a focus on improved cleaning and disinfection practices is essential. Using the right disinfectant not only reduces the opportunity for outbreaks, but enhances satisfaction among a facility’s occupants and curbs unnecessary costs due to absence or illness.

So what makes one disinfectant more effective than another? Keep these four considerations in mind when selecting a disinfectant:

1. A realistic contact time.

Think a surface is decontaminated after a quick spray and a wipe? Think again. First, consult the disinfectant’s label to determine the dwell or contact time. The contact time tells you how long the disinfectant needs to remain wet in order to kill pathogens on the label. Ideally, the product will stay wet and in contact with the pathogen for at least as long, or longer, than the contact time.

Unfortunately, many disinfectants dry before the label contact time is achieved, especially those with longer contact times or high levels of alcohol. Employees may not always reapply the disinfectant to complete the time, meaning that surfaces won’t be properly disinfected. An easy-to-use, effective disinfectant with a shorter contact time is preferred to ensure compliance and efficacy.

2. Safe and pleasant for staff and guests.

Nobody likes to work with, or be around, products that are unpleasant or unsafe. In addition to strong odors, some disinfectants are irritating to eyes, skin or respiratory tracts, and may require the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) such as gloves and masks. These circumstances may cause staff to minimize use of the product, thus compromising cleaning and disinfection results. Facilities should look for a disinfectant that is safer and more pleasant for staff to use, thereby reducing worker exposure to injuries and patron and staff complaints.

3. Asset protection.

Facility furnishings and equipment can be expensive to repair or replace. Some disinfectants are more harmful, or shorten the useful life of assets, resulting in expensive repair or replacement costs.  Understanding a disinfectant’s compatibility with substrates and surfaces can help reduce unnecessary damage and costs. Check the disinfectant’s label to determine on which surfaces it can be used and test a small area when using a disinfectant for the first time.

4. Compatibility with cleaning tools

Not only does a disinfectant need to be compatible with furnishings, it must work well with cleaning tools. Some cleaning tools can actually inhibit the effectiveness of the active ingredients in a disinfectant. For instance, cotton and some microfiber cleaning tools can bind with quaternary ammonium compound-based disinfectants (quats), preventing the release of the disinfectant onto the surface.  Make sure disinfectants are compatible with existing cleaning tools or purchase tools that ensure the efficacy of the disinfectant.

Once the proper disinfectant has been selected, facilities need to ensure employees know how to properly use it. Define cleaning and disinfecting roles and responsibilities so that employees know who is to clean and disinfect what, when, with what, and how often. To further ensure compliance with the process, you can institute a validation program. Validation methods allow facilities to monitor and measure cleaning and disinfection tasks and effectiveness. With the right disinfectant and a plan in place for its proper use, your facility can more effectively disinfect surfaces and keep staff and visitors safe and healthy.

For more information about disinfection solutions from Diversey Care, visit www.sealedair.com/diversey-care/diversey-care-products/infection-prevention.

We recently conducted our first ever BSC expert webinar to share ways to increase your efficiency and profit. Over 100 customers from around the globe were listening in to learn about process improvement. But don’t worry if you missed the session. This blog highlights the webinar’s content so that you can apply it to your own business operations.

Machine selection is one way to improve cleaning efficiency.

BSCs can increase efficiency and realize cost savings by analyzing the following:

1.    Chemicals

I’m sure you’ve witnessed chemicals being wasted or used improperly at some point. By standardizing and harmonizing the range of cleaning products, organizations achieve savings through simplified training, less waste, reduced transportation and storage costs, as well as a reduction in administrative work and costs.

Specifically, super concentrates are a good choice because they can replace ready-to-use and standard concentrates. If dosed through an automated dosing platform, you will increase employee safety while reducing unnecessary overdosing and therefore save on the actual product cost.

But the biggest saving lies in the right choice of cleaning method. For instance, spray cleaning consumes fewer chemicals than the bucket method.

2.    Manual Cleaning Methods

Have you received complaints from workers about exhausting floor care tasks? It may be time to upgrade manual floor cleaning to machine cleaning in order to improve efficiency and reduce unnecessary stress on workers.

Organizations should also review cleaning methods to make sure that the most up-to-date strategies are being utilized, such as cleaning with pre-wetted microfibers and following an efficient machine route.

3.    Machine Selection

The right machine helps organizations improve efficiency. Employees should be able to easily and quickly prepare and maintain the machine. This is accomplished through easy access to the fresh water tank, color-coded maintenance points, optimized construction of the water tank, vacuum motor and wheel drive motor, and easy-to-remove squeegees.

Better maneuverability reduces time dedicated to cleaning. High-quality squeegees, automated dosing and vacuum motors ensure the best results with just one pass, eliminating the need to clean the same area several times.

Moreover the right machine routing is key in order to significantly reduce working time.

4.    Fleet Tracking

How great would it be to keep an eye on your floor care machines from afar? Now you can! Machines are a large investment, so it’s important to protect them. With fleet management tracking technology, organizations are alerted when the machine leaves a designated area or crashes into a wall or other obstruction. BSCs can also understand how long machines are being utilized, enabling them to analyze whether each machine is a good investment. Also, when cleaners know that machines are being tracked, they take better care of them.

5.    Process optimization

There are available systems that can collect presence time, working time, the delivery of critical services, tracking of processes and the measurement of quality. Collecting data is the starting point in order to optimize a process. In order to improve a process you need a standardized approach. For this we use the Lean Six Sigma methodology. Within BSCs, we focus on the standardization of cleaning processes and the improvement of efficiency. This means we will optimize the process flow, focusing again on the optimization of the cleaning methods, considering the use of the best suitable tools, machines and chemicals.  Process documentation and standardized trainings will ensure a stable long-term process.

Although organizations want to improve efficiency in order to reduce costs, employee health and safety must not be compromised. At Diversey Care, we’re dedicated to providing cost-saving solutions that also offer additional benefits. The solutions I’ve outlined above can enhance satisfaction and safety because they simplify work, improve ergonomics and reduce contact with chemicals. Moreover your client satisfaction will increase due to an increased performance level.

Which of these solutions are you considering implementing into your operations? Do you currently utilize some already? Let us know via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

For more information about solutions for BSCs, visit www.diversey.com/industries/building-service-contractors.