As sustainability and ESG goals continue to lead many cleaning and maintenance discussions, assessing your company’s efforts, identifying climate-related risks and opportunities, and providing transparency with climate risk reporting for your operational risks is a viable strategy to improve your efforts, distinguish yourself, and remain compliant.
In a recent edition of ISSA’s Straight Talk! with Jeff Cross, Steve Ashkin, Founder of The Ashkin Group, gives his expert insight into what sustainability is really about and why transparency is vital for cleaning companies.
He asserts that sustainability is not about politics and has nothing to do with your feelings on climate change or who’s responsible, but rather, it’s about companies having enough information to make better decisions – it’s a business discussion.
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What drives sustainability reporting? Ashkin explains that 2025 brings a new wave of multi-level government legislation that mandates reporting on energy use and climate risks. In years past, this type of reporting was a “nice to have,” but today it is becoming a must-have for cleaning companies and cleaning company customers to have to report on their environmental impact.
Beyond this, the business rationale is pretty simple, Ashkin explains. This level of transparency helps your clients make informed decisions that will impact their business. He gives the example of a company that supplies toilet paper to hospitals, and he explains that the hospitals need to know as much about the supplier as they can. Details like whether weather could affect the supply chain, help them better understand risk and improve their operations. In today’s competitive marketplace, companies that provide this level of transparency, show this amount of forethought, and provide assurances may well differentiate themselves from the competition.
“You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” Ashkin says. Along with providing transparency and data for your customers, this level of reporting can help your business save money and optimize operations by looking at things like energy use, water waste, vehicle usage and more, identifying opportunities and taking steps to drive efficiency.
Rather than relying on government mandates, Ashkin stresses the importance of the cleaning industry becoming experts on these issues to help develop policies that will help demonstrate the value of cleaning and the important role that cleaners play in society.
Companies looking to focus more on sustainability and climate reporting can turn to ISSA for training and tools to help cleaning companies from the sustainability committee.
