You can bet that green cleaning will be part of this coming boom, and to help you decide which products and processes you’ll need to take advantage of this market, we’ve published our annual buyer’s guide, a comprehensive listing of tools that will help building services providers meet their own productivity needs while meeting the healthy-cleaning demands of their customers.

The report, “LEED and Beyond: Evolving Trends in Green & Intelligent Buildings in North America,” looks at the recent history of the green building movement and — based on concerns about climate change, potential mandates, and the growing effectiveness and availability of green-building products — concludes that the greening of the building industry is “inevitable.”

LEED-registered projects will account for nearly 25 percent of new construction in the United States, and the report says the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED certification program will be the biggest beneficiary of this boom, being the go-to standard since its inception, though it will face some competition from other standards in development.

For example, the ISSA and the Cleaning Industry Research Institute (CIRI) have announced a long-term partnership for the cooperative development of science-based cleaning standards that would develop industry data, training, measurement, and certification programs.

The partnership supports ISSA’s strategic initiative to identify the link between cleaning, science, and occupant health. Its first project is to fund a series of independent research initiatives leading to the development of a Clean Standard for K-12 schools.

“The ISSA project is to make the connection between science and cleaning for health,” said ISSA Executive Director John Garfinkel. “We are very pleased to fund such a worthwhile independent effort to identify and develop standards for cleanliness, utilizing a group of highly credentialed scientists and researchers. Many other facility services industries have long been based in engineering and science, while our industry has largely had to prove its public health value based on assumptions and perceptions. Today, we want to remove any doubt about the benefits cleaning brings to facilities and their occupants, and we hope this initiative will bring the independent scientific verification many facility managers have been requesting.”

“This partnership will lead to the definition of what is clean under real world conditions in specific school environments, as well as how it is measured and how it is achieved,” said Dr. Steven Spivak, CIRI Science Chair and professor emeritus at the University of Maryland.

The first update regarding this project is expected to be released at the ISSA/INTERCLEAN North America convention, Sept. 8-11 in Las Vegas.

In another development, the USGBC recently revised its LEED for Existing Buildings standard to make a green-cleaning policy mandatory for certification, allowing credits for an audit using APPA’s Custodial Staffing Guidelines for Educational Facilities. Institutions can earn up to two LEED points for using APPA’s guidelines as part of the Quality Cleaning section of LEED’s Operations and Maintenance guide to determine the appearance level of the facility.

The intent of the assessment is “to reduce the exposure of building occupants and maintenance personnel to potentially hazardous chemical, biological, and particulate contaminants — which adversely affect air quality, human health, building finishes, building systems, and the environment — by implementing, managing, and auditing cleaning procedures and processes.”

For more information on this guideline, visit the APPA bookstore at www.appa.org, or go to www.usgbc.org. For more information on where to find the tools, product and equipment you’ll need to meet these and other guidelines, turn the page and keep reading.

Thanks, and good luck.