Company: Cleanology
Founder: Dominic Ponniah
Website: https://cleanology.com/
About Cleanology
Established 25 years ago, Cleanology provides professional office and commercial cleaning services, property maintenance and a wide range of support services across the UK. Clients include blue-chip corporates, Royal palaces and world-renowned brands It’s now a Top 50 UK cleaning company, employing over 1400 people from over 30 countries. Cleanology was co-founded by current CEO Dominic Ponniah and his mother Elisabeth, in 1999, with one client and one cleaner as a small home-business.
Cleanology focuses its efforts on areas which achieve the greatest environmental impact, being the first to market in key areas with the hope its environmental innovations will become industry norms. This is recognised by 45% of clients choosing Cleanology for its sustainability record.
Cleanology believes fair pay is critical to achieve a truly sustainable world, and Dominic Ponniah sits on the Living Wage Foundation’s Leadership Group.
In 2017, 18% of its staff received a Real Living Wage rate of pay. Today, that’s increased to 97% overall, and 100% of all new business won in 2022 and 2023.
Cleanology has advocated chemical-free cleaning and is now almost chemical-free across its entire portfolio. Over-dosing of cleaning chemicals is a problem in the sector. While adding an extra cupful of solution may not seem significant, if you multiply that across the 450,000 people across industry, the impact becomes critical. To tackle this issue, Cleanology was the first in Europe to introduce portion-controlled biological cleaning sachets. Since 2017, it has saved over 144,000 litres of cleaning solution.
Since switching to these sachets, it has cut plastic bottle usage from 22,000 to just 500 PET bottles a year, saving a staggering 132,000 plastic bottles from being used.
Its focus has now shifted to deal with enormous plastic waste created by mop heads with plastic sockets. Given it uses over 135,000 mop heads a year, it’s now using mop heads where you only change the strings, not the plastic.
Following a successful trial Cleanology became the first UK cleaning company to introduce uniforms made from recycled plastic bottles, saving 7,000 bottles from landfill annually.
Its fully electric fleet is the exception in an industry that clocks up substantial mileage travelling to client sites. Its entire van fleet in London is 100% electric, saving 5,000 litres of diesel per year – equivalent to 13.5 tonnes of CO2.
All energy used to power its Head Office is from 100% sustainable sources – including 48% wind, solar 24%, 16% bioenergy and 12% hydro.
Cleanology regularly survey employees to assess their level of environmental awareness. This improved from 69% in 2019 to 81% last year and it aims to reach over 90% this year.
Cleanology also shines internationally, winning the biggest industry prize in Europe for its approach to sustainability at the European Cleaning & Hygiene Awards 2023, held in Dublin. The firm also won the Sustainability category of the 2023 Green Apple Awards.
Dominic Ponniah has also joined the Sustainability Committee of ISSA, The Worldwide Cleaning Industry Association, with the goal of driving Cleanology’s sustainability vision globally.
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