Environmental Responsibility
At present there is a hot topic in the house wash industry and it revolves around the environmental impacted that our industry is having in the local community and how we are effecting the environment.
As most company's us a sodium hypochlorite based cleaning soap, commonly known as bleach we would have to assume there would be some negative impact on the environment! A lot of house wash company's advertise the fact that there soaps are bio-degradable, Which they are, Bleach brakes down into its natural elements mainly salt.
The issue arises when two much salt at one time is released into the environment at any given time it can cause the PH level in the soil or water ways to change dramatically and can cause a very caustic environment.
This convocation in our local area arose of late due to one of our competition being charged and prosecuted for releasing a large amount of SH into a local feeder stream to a major water way, This caused a large amount of fish, and eel death very very fast.
For more information on this case please read the news article linked http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/89739404/Chemwash-Hamilton-fronts-up-over-fish-kill-spill
Talking to the owner of this company it seems they actually had the equipment to suck the chemicals from the storm water drain and remove it from site before it could actually go into the stream but an employee placed the recovery equipment at the wrong drain and the chemicals coming off a roof they where cleaning made it way into the drain system and into a water way at the rear of the property. Now giving full credit to the owner of the house wash company as soon as he was made aware of the issue and the subsequent investigation he stepped up, admitted fault, co-operated fully with the investigation. In my personal opinion i do not believe there was any intention by this company to discharge the chemical into the waterway. The company in question has learnt from this mistake and have implemented policy's and procedures to never have this happen again.
In your business what policy's and procedure do you have in place so not to be the one in court over major environmental breaches. I know at Wash Rite House Wash we have robust chemical handling policy's and procedure in place and constant training for our staff. We also have a full environmental policy in place which is aligned with the company policy of ZERO HARM, That's zero harm to staff's health and safety, zero harm to the environment and zero harm to the company reputation.
I Highly recommend you take a minute and have a look at your business and how your business looks at its environmental impact and see if there is anywhere you can improve.
Troy Hillard
Director
Wash Rite
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