A Model for Sustainable Cleaning
Unity College Leading the Way with New Recycling Program

Unity, Maine – July, 2008 – In his first year as Lead Custodian at Unity College, Keith Giles has completely changed the way cleaning is done. Gone are the days of isolated Custodians working with toxic chemicals. Giles has transformed cleaning approaches at Unity College to incorporate the very latest in “green” cleaning.

Other colleges and organizations are taking note of the way that Giles has organized cleaning practices to incorporate team cleaning, where groups of custodians work together throughout the day. It is both cost effective and efficient, and combined with a host of “green” cleaning products, is creating a new model for institutional cleaning.

“Our green cleaning program incorporates green seal cleaning products,” noted Giles. “Green seal is an independent organization that certifies green cleaning products for health, safety and effectiveness. This is a very involved process with rigorous standards.”

Keith Giles at a recycling station

Giles has been attracting the attention of both colleges and private organizations, fielding calls and requests for training sessions. He sees it as his responsibility to help because as with every aspects of Unity College, the environmental mission comes first and if he can help outside organizations to become greener in their cleaning practices, then that is in-keeping with Unity’s environmental mission.

“I’m working on a training program right now,” Giles said. “I am designing this program to be a model in green cleaning for other organizations to follow.”

Working closely with Unity’s new full-time Sustainability Coordinator Rob Beranek, Giles has designed recycling stations to be placed in Unity College residence halls. The recycling stations are made of wood and pained with environmentally friendly paint.

“These stations are uniformly color coded with an easy-to-use system that allows for sorting different types of material,” noted Giles. When Custodians access the stations, they will already have a host sorted items available, saving time, money and effort. It’s recycling made easy with the bottom line serving both student body and local recycling center.

“This approach puts more money into the pocket of the local recycling center,” Giles said. “They do not receive as much money for paper when both white and color are mixed. What happens is they sell that paper and that money gets recycled back into the community.”
In this latter respect, Giles explained that each town sends material to the recycling center. Once there, it is organized and sold, with profits being returned back to the town.

“This recycling program at Unity College helps improve the bottom line of our local recycling center, and that is good for everyone concerned,” Giles said.

Giles is providing a recycling station to Unity Elementary School to help jump start their recycling program.

“We are going to work with Unity Elementary School this year to provide education and support with goal being to turn over complete control of this recycling system to them by the end of the 2008-2009 school year,” he added.

Unity College is a small private college in rural Maine that provides dedicated, engaged students with a liberal arts education which emphasizes the environment and natural resources. Unity College graduates are prepared to be environmental stewards, effective leaders, and responsible citizens through active learning experiences within a supportive community.