5:30-6:30 a.m.: Keep office lights off at night, clean by day
March 12, 2010
San Grewal
STAFF REPORTER
If you have ever scanned the Toronto skyline at night and wondered why so much light pollution emanates from the office towers, you share something in common with Randy Burke.
Because most office cleaning takes place at night, building lights are left on well after the staff departs for home.
“The practice of leaving building lights on at night can account for up to 8 per cent of a tower’s overall energy use,” says Burke, the founder of Calgary based DCS Global Enterprise, which has introduced an entirely different approach to office cleaning, one that has recently arrived in Toronto.
“We arrange for office cleaning during the day, starting when building lights come on around 6 a.m. It’s more environmentally sensitive, it saves money, it saves energy, there’s less light pollution and tenants like it,” Burke says.
The company has only recently launched its Toronto operation, but Burke says in Calgary 20 per cent of the city’s office cleaning is now being done through DCS.
“Of the 23 buildings we have converted (to daytime cleaning) in Calgary, none of them has gone back.”
Burke, who has more than 25 years of experience in the commercial cleaning business, says the practice of nighttime cleaning in office buildings began in the ’50s, as the industry was built around part-time workers. There was also a convenience factor of having sometimes disruptive work done outside business hours.
Burke says tenants actually like seeing the work done and cleaning companies he contracts out to are trained to be unobtrusive. They also use only eco-friendly cleaning agents and high efficiency vacuums. He says clients appreciate decreased security risks by having the work done during the day.
“Commercial cleaning is a $100 billion industry in North America each year,” Burke says. “The main reason most of the cleaning is still done at night is just because people got used to it.”
Fact: According to the U.S. Department of Energy, in America the total electricity cost for lighting each year is about $55 billion. Office lighting is one of the largest energy draws in the workplace, accounting for 28 per cent of total workplace energy consumption.
One in a daily series leading up to Earth Hour, which urges people around the globe to turn out their lights for one hour on Saturday, March 27 at 8:30 p.m.